Nationally, colleges and universities are under increasing pressure to lower expenses. One way UNC Charlotte is taking the lead to save its students money is through the use of e-texts for scholarly monographs, which are often specialized, supplemental course materials.
The purchase of digital monographs from university presses is a relatively new phenomenon with controversial implications, explained Stanley Wilder, UNC Charlotte’s University librarian.
“Major university presses very recently made their works available in digital form,” said Wilder. “Libraries who purchase these digital monographs can save their students money; however, this impacts the revenue stream of university publishers that expect to sell multiple hard copies of each text. The use of digital texts is disruptive to the marketplace, but, at the same time, I believe these e-book packages could be the salvation of university presses.”
UNC Charlotte’s J. Murrey Atkins Library purchased a package of digital texts in mid-2013 through Project Muse, a long-standing not-for-profit association that has agreements with more than 100 top university presses in the country.
“We took the lead in buying e-book packages, and in the fall, we notified students of 30 e-books being used as textbooks in our collection using Twitter and other methods to drive traffic to these e-texts,” Wilder stated. “It was very successful, so for this spring semester, we doubled the number. I just received an email from a history student who said all the assigned readings for her course are available online – that represents no textbook costs for that student – a significant savings.”
University presses provide an important venue for faculty scholars nationally and internationally, and for faculty whose works are published, there is a level of prestige among their peers, said Wilder, adding that these scholarly monographs contribute to the body of knowledge.
But, as Wilder pointed out, university presses are on the decline due to the current economic climate and the need to contain costs for higher education.
“Digital packages open up these scholarly publications to a larger audience than the current model can allow. The normal press run for a monograph is 500 to 1,000 copies, and no library purchases every publication,” said Wilder. “The old system is crumbling, and I am encouraging my professional colleagues to understand that our purchase of available aggregator packages of scholarly monographs has been terrifically cost-effective, and if their libraries buy them, then they’ll be embraced, used and their institutions will recoup the cost quicker than they think.”
Photo: An example of some of the e-text offerings available through Atkins Library.