Open educational resource advocacy utilizing library usage analytics.

1. Library Usage as a Map for
Targeting OER Advocacy
November 2, 2016
Greg Raschke, Will Cross, Sydney Thompson,
John Vickery, Lillian Rigling

2. Local Context
● Copyright and Digital Scholarship Center.
● Student activism.
● Textbooks on Reserve.
● Physics textbook.
● Alt-Textbooks.

6. Do Something
Textbooks Can’t!
“Students in Immersion Theater”
© North Carolina State University

7. Local Context to Local Study

8. The Project
Find a starting point for outreach - top 25%.
Price
Enrollment Use

9. About the Data
Data sources:
● Lists of official textbooks from NCSU bookstores
○ Price and enrollment
● Data warehouse of ILS transactions
○ Link usage to the semester that the textbook was in use
● Point in time ILS data
○ Crosswalk the data between bookstore and ILS transactions
● Course and enrollment data
Timeframe:
● Fall 2014 to Spring 2016 (summers excluded)

10. Total number of textbooks, courses and sections
All four semesters
Textbooks Courses Sections
4,494 2,158 13,163

11. Total number of textbooks, courses and sections
By Semester
Semester Textbooks Courses Sections
Fall 2014 2,039 1,250 3,767
Spring 2015 1,735 1,083 3,085
Fall 2015 1,894 1,121 3,355
Spring 2016 1,764 1,069 2,956

12. Key Findings
● Clear set of “low hanging fruit” textbooks
● Approx. 100 textbooks identified for each semester
● 49 different departments represented in the top 25% list
○ Math
○ Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
○ Computer Science
○ Statistics
○ Electrical & Computer Engineering
● 230 = average enrollment
● $162 = average price

13. Distribution of textbook prices

14. What We Did with the Findings
Alt-Textbook Prep:
- Information sessions located within convenient proximity to targeted
departments
- Required registration for information sessions
- Cross referencing lists of attendees with top departments

15. What We Did with the Findings
Data + Relationships = Outreach
- Work closely with subject specialists
- Identify pre-existing relationships between librarians & faculty in top 25%
- Engaging at the College/Departmental leadership level
- Data provides certain credibility - particularly in relation to demand

16. Next Steps
Student Outreach:
- Establish the libraries as a powerful ally for open education
- Partner with student leadership
- Create framework for open education advocacy “on student time”

17. Next Steps
More Questions:
- What about 26%, 30%, 35%?
- What about high-use, high-enrollment, but not “high-cost”?
- Unique users and cost: saving money or just backaches?
- Study relationship between use and affordability from user
perspective