Textbook affordability initiative at American University of Nigeria

The AU Nigeria Library is working on a project meant to facilitate the use of E-textbooks and the adoption of OER and OAR to make learning more affordable. The major players in the experiment are faculty, technologists, student workers and librarians, who initially worked in an open office for easy collaboration.

A major challenge facing AU Nigeria Library is its inability to provide affordable textbooks to support students’ learning. Since physical books are not easy to obtain, the Library came up with a project to promote the use of E-textbooks and to adopt resources from the Open Access Resources (OAR) and Open Educational Resources (OER). The key players in the experiment are the Faculty, Technologists, Information Literacy Instructors, student workers, and the Director Digital Services (DDS). Faculty members initiate the process by forwarding textbook requests to the Director who in conjunction with the IL Instructor checks whether a current copy exists. The process of checking for non-available copies from OER and OAR is conducted by the student workers under the supervision of the IL Instructor. Titles not available are sent to the Technologists where the E-book Unit makes the purchase. Stakeholders shared an Open Office for easy collaboration. The experiment is yielding results since 167 E-textbooks were acquired for three Schools while seven E-textbooks were adopted from the OAR/OER during the previous Semester. The project faces the challenge of Faculty preference for physical copies and their reluctance to replace their course materials with OER due to credibility concerns.