James Cook University (JCU) Library serves a vast geographic area in regional and remote North and Far North Queensland, Australia. This area includes the main Townsville and Cairns campuses, six satellite study centres and external staff and students. A JCU strategic priority is transformative education, with an aim of widening participation in higher education for regional, remote, Indigenous, and first-in-family students. However, financial pressures pose a significant challenge for these students, affecting their enrolment, retention, and successful completion of university studies (Devlin & McKay, 2017; Zając & Tomaszewski, 2023). A desire to respond to the financial difficulties faced by many JCU students underpins the University’s strong commitment to open education and textbook affordability.
Academic libraries working to improve student textbook affordability is not new. North American efforts are growing in maturity, leading to an increasing number of courses publicly marked as open and affordable for students (Johnson et al., 2023). The University of South Australia Library provides recent inspiration for textbook affordability projects within the Australian higher education landscape (Gillespie, 2023). At JCU, the Library recognises that ‘open is everyone’s business’, and that subject textbook costs can be reduced. Accordingly, the Library has launched a Textbook Affordability Project (TAP), 2024-2025, targeting student-paid prescribed textbooks in first-year core subjects.
The need for TAP is apparent given 2023 Library data estimates that first-year students could have paid approximately $2,194,238 for their prescribed textbooks for core subjects. As a result, the initiative has the support of JCU’s Education Division and the Academy. The Library has invited collaboration from academic stakeholders to identify and implement free-for-student paid textbook alternatives. While the project is ongoing, interim analysis has identified several factors that have contributed to project success so far:
- JCU Library leadership has invested considerable time and demonstrated strong support for the project.
- Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP) grant funding was secured for:
- two short-term staff positions to ensure successful project coordination
- CU internal grants targeting academic stakeholders to maximise ongoing benefits for the JCU community.
- The whole-of-Library project status means the team can draw upon expertise from all Library staff.
- The core project team is drawn from four geographic locations bringing together complementary skills to meet differing facets of project requirements.
- A subscription to Airtable, a cloud-based relational database tool, facilitates management of the project’s complex relationships, data analysis and reporting.
- The TAP team has been able to leverage results from the highly successful JCU Open eBooks program.
At the end of the project, the aim is for this work to be business as usual for the Library and academic stakeholders, with an ongoing commitment to provide JCU students with as many zero textbook cost (ZTC) study options as possible.
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[Session 6B]: Global Access and EquityReferencesDevlin, M., & McKay, J. (2017). Facilitating success for students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds at regional universities. Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success. https://www.ncsehe.edu.au/project/facilitating-success-students-low-socioeconomic-status-backgrounds-regional-universities-2/ Gillespie, K. (2023). Minimising ‘cost to student’ course materials project final report. University of South Australia Library. https://www.library.unisa.edu.au/siteassets/files/memoreportassqctextbookminimisationfeb2023.pdf Johnson, G., Parks, J., Many, A., and Diaz, L. (2023). Findings of the OER course marking landscape analysis survey. Midwestern Higher Education Compact. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED645370.pdf Zając, T. & Tomaszewski, W. (2023). Relative influence of different markers of socioeconomic status on university participation. In Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (Ed.), Australia’s welfare 2023: Data insights. (pp. 193-214). https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/australias-welfare-2023-data-insights/contents/uni-participation
Author Keywordsequity, social justice, textbook affordability, regional and remote students, project management
