This post was contributed by Emma Wood.

I enrolled in a Spanish 101 course my freshman year of college to fulfill a language requirement, and I gasped to find that the required text Dos Mundos would run me about $180. This was in 2003, and my only income was a part-time job at the public library where I was making minimum wage – $6.75/hour at the time in Massachusetts. I was also trying to maintain my very used car as a commuter student and pay the litany of other expenses that started to emerge in my newfound adulthood. The acquisition of this book was a “core memory” (to borrow a phrase from Disney’s Inside Out) because of the mental labor it required. $180 might as well have been an immovable boulder for me (it’s about $300 today with inflation) so I contemplated my options. I couldn’t lean on my immediate family financially, but perhaps I could turn to a friend’s parent or a distant relative? I envisioned the awkward and pride-crushing possibility of asking to borrow money. I was already borrowing thousands from Sallie Mae to attend college in the first place. I considered the avenue of foregoing the book purchase altogether, but I noticed some of the required assignments came directly from the text. I spent the first week of the course not learning Spanish, but instead agonizing over getting Dos Mundos into my backpack. And could I get it into my backpack…without the campus store staff noticing? No, this was just an intrusive thought rather than an actionable one; a fleeting thought from a person who would otherwise not pursue a life of crime.

My saving grace was my part-time library job – not in the small weekly check it provided – but in the magic of interlibrary loan. I recall the electric sparks I felt pulling Dos Mundos with its smooth cover and crispy pages from the ILL shelf – the very book that was out of reach for me in the campus store. I also recall returning that copy beyond overdue, and then ordering another copy, an earlier edition this time because I had maxed my options on the latest edition. I went on to extend due dates and reorder various editions of Dos Mundos to complete the semester. Whilst engaging in this renew and reorder process, I noticed that a considerable portion of the book was going unread in my Spanish 101 class. This left me pondering why my professor had opted for this very expensive book when we weren’t going to read every last word. Weren’t there other resources for learning basic Spanish? Some of the books sitting on the shelves of the public library where I worked came to mind as well as the binders of photocopies in the homeschool section. Language-learning and translation websites were growing in number and quality as well. 

The library rescued me, and the importance of free and affordable resources were written in indelible ink on my heart from then on, but I wouldn’t put the pieces together in an operative way until later: I was introduced to the term Open Access (OA) while working on my MLS at Simmons College. I enrolled in a course about OA because the topic sounded interesting and the class suited my schedule. I was floored by the concept of authors and publishers willingly releasing their content for free, and for the public good. I was instantly smitten. I was introduced to Creative Commons licenses – the licenses most often applied to OER.

In addition to my personal experience, I have witnessed the gymnastics students will do to secure their readings without buying the required textbook. I was a librarian in a law school for about 10 years, and quickly learned that casebooks can cost upwards of $300 each. Some students came to rely on our library’s reserve collection which included one copy of every required book and could be borrowed for two hours at a time. Many bright and brilliant future lawyers struggle with access to their casebooks.

Now I’m a Scholarly Communication Librarian focusing on promoting Open Educational Resources (OER) on our campus. I helped to get an OER Adoption incentive program and an OER Creators incentive program off the ground, initiatives that make me immensely proud. My personal experience with textbook affordability combined with my professional experience serving students has allowed me to approach OER on campus with empathy and a strong understanding of the challenges.

When students are faced with a required textbook that they cannot afford today, they wrestle with the same considerations that I did: How can I procure the funds? Is there an expense in my life that I can put on hold? Should I drop the class? Can I take out more loans? Often these decisions lead to negative student outcomes such as earning a poor grade, enrolling in fewer credits and delaying graduation, or even failing courses. Inclusive Access programs have promised to level the playing field and alleviate some cost, but have largely perpetuated the same obstacles and created new ones such as homework assignments being held hostage for students who opt out of the fees.

I wouldn’t propose gaming the interlibrary loan system as a solution, but I do think the advocacy for OER belongs strongly to libraries, and needs top-down administrative support to be successful. Librarians have long facilitated access to information and have broken down paywalls for years. Textbook affordability and OER initiatives are a natural fit for us and well worth our investment of time and resources.  I’m happy to see them growing at many libraries. These initiatives result in advocacy not just for access to textbooks, but for equity and inclusion through a level educational playing field.

My advice for anyone trying to get an OER program off the ground is to identify your stakeholders and align with interested parties on your campus. You will hear counterarguments from those who won’t support your cause, and you can make your case to persuade, but this isn’t the best use of your energy. Focus first on connecting with the believers who know the importance of the movement, and build your network. There are colleagues on every campus who have either struggled themselves with buying textbooks or who have seen it happen with their students. As these personal experiences are shared and grow so does our resolve to find affordable solutions. Dos Mundos means two worlds, and I think that the two worlds of OER and traditional publishing can coexist – not one versus the other, but as choices that depend on a variety of factors such as subject, teaching style, and accessibility.

Here I am with Dos Mundos 20 years later. Our wonderful interlibrary loan staff helped me to secure a copy for this photo even though the book is now out-of-print.

This post is by Emma Wood and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, except where otherwise indicated. Please reference OER and Beyond and use this URL when attributing this work; for more information on licensing, see our Open Access Policy.