College textbooks can put a great strain on a student’s budget. A recent government report found that textbook prices are rising at an average of 6 percent a year, about twice the inflation rate, and account for a student’s biggest expense after tuition. CUNY is looking for ways to make textbooks more affordable. In September, University Librarian Curtis Kendrick spoke at a hearing of the New York City Council’s Higher Education Committee, chaired by Councilman Charles Barron, about the escalating cost of textbooks and ways of driving down costs in a down economy and in the future.

IG: How did textbooks get to be so expensive?
KC: The $10 billion U.S. textbook industry is dominated by three firms “Pearson, Wiley, Cengage” that have 60% market share. This leaves little room for competitive pricing. There’s also the textbook industry practice of selling to customers”the students”who are not the ones making the book selections. In what critics call a “broken market,” the faculty makes the selections, usually with little regard to the cost. Students typically spend from $700 to $1,100 a year on textbooks. As a percentage of tuition, that’s 22% of tuition at CUNY’s senior colleges, and higher at our community colleges.
IG: The costs are a major issue for CUNY students?
KC: Yes, because about two out of five CUNY students come from families with household incomes of less than $20,000. The university is particularly sensitive to the barrier of rising textbook prices.
IG: What other factors drive up textbook prices?
KC: There’s a process called “bundling,” in which publishers include supplemental materials such as one-use CDs and workbooks with the textbook. Bundling also lets publishers justify creating new editions and inhibits sales of used textbooks.
IG: I’ve heard that the price of the same textbook can vary around the world. Is that true?
KC: Yes, that’s what’s known as differential pricing. The same textbook sold overseas may cost only a fraction of what it’s charged here in the United States. And publishers have begun to limit the consumers’ ability to tap into this global market.
IG: What is being done to curb these practices?
KC: Growing concern over textbook costs has spurred legislation to make textbooks more affordable. The New York State Textbook Access Act of 2008, for example, requires colleges to encourage faculty to place their book orders early so that bookstores can buy textbooks in used or digital formats. And the federal Higher Education Opportunity Act, which takes effect next summer, requires publishers to unbundle textbooks and disclose online ISBN and retail price information to colleges.
IG: Has the Internet changed the dynamics of the textbook market?
KC: Yes, it has. As we see, both of these pieces of legislation recognize the potential of the Internet to correct the informational asymmetries in the market that contribute to students paying more for books. The Internet and other technologies are reshaping the market in other ways that are highly beneficial to students.
IG: In which ways?
KC: Over the past five years a new movement has started to take shape in higher education. It’s called “open access” and refers to high-quality books and other scholarly materials made available over the Internet and at no cost. The development of open-access textbooks has been slow, but this is changing. Rice University and the Foothill-De Anza Community College District in California are students with free access to online textbooks, and 85 community colleges are exploring the feasibility of doing the same.
IG: Besides their low cost, are there any other advantages to reading textbooks online?
KC: Increasingly, Web-based textbooks provide innovative means of access. Flat World Knowledge, a new digital-textbook publisher, provides instructors the possibility of putting together new versions of their course materials, which are peer-reviewed and user-editable, and free of charge.
IG: That’s interesting. What is CUNY doing to help students shoulder the steep price of textbooks?
KC: CUNY has been helping through programs like the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) Initiative”a program that Councilman Barron helped create”and lets ASAP students receive textbooks at no cost. More recently, CUNY has taken measures to help students through the $10 million Student Financial Aid Initiative, which was created to protect students whose matriculation could be at risk, due to last year’s tuition increase. This fall, CUNY allocated $2 million to campus libraries for the purchase of textbooks and electronic books. Libraries have been quick to acquire textbooks and make them available on course reserves. In the first two months of the current school year, we have seen that the new reserve textbooks had already been used more than 55,000 times.
IG: Thanks to these funds, you’re also building CUNY’s first free e-book collection. Can you give us an update of your progress?
KC: We are currently negotiating the acquisition of 44,000 e-books. We have set into motion the trend for buying books online rather than through campus bookstores. The University is also encouraging colleges to utilize used textbooks and develop student co-op programs to seek or donate used textbooks, and encourage campuses to reduce college commissions and pass the savings to students through college bookstore discounts. Finally, CUNY is developing a matching gift program so that private donors can help students cover their textbook obligations. These are a few of the ways in which we are mending the broken market and providing leadership in leveling the playing field for our students.
IG: Thank you.

The Internet has revolutionized the way we access the news, read books and listen to music. Now digital technology is changing academic publishing. A movement is growing to promote free and open access to scholarly articles”and libraries are leading the way. Harvard, MIT and the National Institutes of Health have all adopted resolutions to make their researchers’ publications free and accessible.
Opposition to open access has come from major scholarly publishers, like Elsevier and Blackwell, and some academics, who claim that it would compromise the high standards of peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Another challenge comes from Rep. John Conyers, who introduced a bill (the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act) that would bar Federal agencies from implementing open-access policy, arguing that open access is damaging to the commercial market in academic publishing.
To help us make sense of the controversy surrounding open access in academic publishing, we talked to Curtis Kendrick.
IG: How did the trend toward openness in scholarly publishing come about?
CK: The open-access movement came about from the sea change in publishing. Digital technology created the means to disseminate information cheaply and immediately. And the many advances in knowledge, in particular the sciences and medicine, have given rise to an unprecedented rate of research. Yet, access to this wealth of information is restricted to those who can afford to pay the high subscription costs, and the high prices of journals make it hard for even the wealthiest libraries to acquire them.
IG: Why is open access important and how can it help turn around this shortfall?
CK: Open access is critical for scholars, who rely on the exchange of ideas, and perhaps even more so in the developing world, where access to libraries and to the Internet is limited. The Hunter College Kitengesa Community Library Research Project is a good example of the latter. A rural library in a war-torn village in Uganda”which Dr. Kate Perry started with her husband from a tin box of books”has grown into an important learning center in just a few years. By giving people access to the wider world of learning through books and the Internet, the library project has helped foster literacy in the community.
IG: That’s wonderful. But does open access mean the end of commercial publishers?
CK: No, I don’t think so. Open access provides the means to improve the system of scholarly publishing by breaking the monopoly that commercial journals have over intellectual property. That doesn’t mean we’ll do without commercial publishers altogether, but we’ll have a viable alternative, provided that a sound model for open-access publications evolves in parallel. Open access would also end the current practice in commercial publishing that requires authors to buy back their own work from publishers if they want to use it in the classroom.
IG: That’s similar to the scenario with online doctoral dissertations, which are off-bounds to authors who don’t have a subscription to ProQuest.
CK: Yes, exactly. The negative consequences don’t end there. Since libraries have to cut back on their acquisition of monographs to make room for expensive journals, university presses are cutting back on the number of books they publish. This hurts young scholars, who have fewer opportunities to publish their dissertations and other works in university presses.
IG: Critics of open access say the Internet can’t replace peer-reviewed journals.
CK: I think it was Esther Dyson who said digital technology would usher in new business models for publishing free content on the Internet. That’s what’s happening now in university and research libraries. As librarians and scholars explore this new frontier, they’re making sure that the editorial processes for maintaining the integrity of digital publications are of the same high quality as in traditional publishing: peer review, high quality editorial boards and copyediting. They’re also grappling with creating an infrastructure that can manage digital collections. And there’s the question of copyright. Nowadays most digital resources are licensed to the publisher. This means that once the subscription ends, access to information ends, too. This is another area where libraries are providing leadership.
IG: How are they doing that?
CK: Harvard and MIT have adopted resolutions making their faculty’s publications available to the public for free and open access on the Internet. Under this policy, Harvard and MIT will receive noncommercial licenses from authors, meaning that they cannot make a profit from publications. Universities and faculty have the right to use and share the articles in any way they like other than to draw a profit. Of course faculty can opt out and sign exclusive agreements with commercial journals. Columbia has not yet adopted a comprehensive open-access policy, but it has created an academic commons, an online repository run by the library, for faculty who choose to make their research free and accessible.
IG: What else are libraries doing to speed their open-access policies?
CK: Adoption requires support from the wider academic community, not just libraries. The impetus will have to come from the university administration, and it will also have to gain acceptance from the scholarly community. Digital scholarship will have to earn their recognition and be on par with publishing in the established journals. For now, publishing in established journals is still the way of getting tenure, and that will have to change if open access is to gain acceptance.
IG: Please expand on this last point.
CK: Essentially promotion and tenure committees have to accept open access publications as potentially the equal of print or fee-based publications. That means putting open access publications through the same rigorous peer review process of traditional publications. We know that this is happening. The NIH is making accessible the peer-reviewed manuscripts of the research it funds through the National Library of Medicine within 12 months of publication. That time lag lets scholarly journals retain their role of breaking the research news first, but it also lets the NIH share intellectual property widely”
and fulfill its mission to the public. And that is the responsibility of every college and university.

“What Google Books Deal Means for Libraries” is the first in a series of chats with Curtis Kendrick, CUNY University Librarian, on a wide variety of topics affecting libraries, CUNY and the community at large. Since Curtis took office in 2004, he has been committed to improving access to information through exchange of ideas and resources among CUNY faculty and the library, within departments, and with other NYC educational and cultural organizations. In the same spirit of exchange, this column encourages dialogue among all of these communities. We invite our readers’ responses.

What Google Book Deal Means for Libraries

Since Google began work in 2002 on its plan to digitize millions of books in the collections of major research libraries, the digital conversion project known as Google Book Search has been the subject of intense debate. After publishers and authors sued Google for copyright infringement, Google agreed to seek the permission of copyright holders before licensing their material. If the settlement is approved in the coming months, Google will have permission to digitize nearly all copyrighted materials in the United States. Google continues to face stiff opposition from critics, including the American Library Association, and the nonprofit Internet Archive, which maintains that the settlement would give copyright immunity to Google alone and has filed a motion to intervene in this case. The Justice Department has opened an antitrust inquiry into the settlement.

Irene Gashurov, an editor for the Office of Library Services, talked to Curtis Kendrick, CUNY University Librarian, about the issues behind the Google project and what it may mean for libraries.

IG: Google’s website says the Book Search will benefit everyone-libraries, publishers, authors, readers. Some major libraries have allowed Google to scan their collections. Why is there such an outcry against the project?

Curtis: There are at least two and likely many more sides to this story. On the one hand, there is a vision of open access to an unfettered repository of digitized information, free of charge or restrictions. Every Internet user will have access to this knowledge from a terminal at the public library or from a desktop at home. Since the holdings of the great libraries will become available, scholarship stands to get wider distribution and influence. No longer will there be need to pay publishers to reprint faculty’s own publications from scholarly journals. Such access is a great boon for scholarship, for intellectual democracy.

IG: And on the other?

Curtis: In another scenario, Google will have exclusive control over this digital library. Some critics have called the Google Book Search project a monopoly over information, where the property is copyright and information. If this holds true, Google can charge whatever prices it wants for access to its online materials. And with no competition, it will have full copyright privileges to orphan or out-of-print books.

IG: What is at issue with out-of-copyright books?

Curtis: They are at the heart of the controversy. It could be said that Google is renewing access to this out-of-print material, which can get lost in library stacks. But according to the settlement, which I hear has been delayed until August, there’s no copyright infringement, only because no author or publisher can be found to authorize Google’s use of these books. Orphan books make up a large part of research library collections. That’s the territory over which the Internet Archive is in opposition to Google. Internet Archive is saying that the settlement agreement gives Google exclusive rights to digitize orphan books, which is why they’ve intervened in the case.

IG: So what’s the optimum scenario for libraries?

Curtis: I believe that a company like Google is very useful for creating open access to the information stored in our research collections. It has the wealth to achieve this quickly. But Google should not have an exclusive right to these orphan works. If some other entity wants to digitize them they should be allowed to as well. Sometimes the possibility of competition is sufficient to ward off some of the less desirable aspects of a monopoly. Allowing for the possibility of competitors’ creating their own digital libraries can serve as a restraint on prices.