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Open and Affordable Textbook Initiative @ the Library

The Open and Affordable Textbook Initiative (OATI) is designed to help LMU faculty identify, adopt, and/or create high-quality, flexible, accessible, and low-or no-cost course materials for our LMU students using Open Educational Resources (OER) and library-licensed materials. 
This year, the William H. Hannon Library is offering stipends to LMU faculty to review and teach with open educational resources (OER). OER are teaching and learning tools that faculty can modify according to their individual teaching needs, and that students can perpetually access for free.

Resources

FAQs

  • OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers for students, and which also carry legal permissions for open use. OER can: 

    • Increase equity - provides access for all students to the learning materials they need on day one (and also in the future)
    • Offer faculty creativity and flexibility in course design (faculty have the ability to customize relevant and high quality content to align with unique teaching and learning outcomes)
    • Create opportunities to engage students with content creation
    • Support local and global access to teaching and learning as a social justice issue
    • Reduce the cost of an LMU education for our students

  • Yes, please! Regardless of how or where textbooks are ultimately accessed or purchased, it’s important to submit your required textbook adoptions to the bookstore. Barnes & Noble Education allows faculty to submit Open Educational Resources (OER) and library e-books, and can include information on the bookstore website for students to access.

  • Not all of our e-books in Primo have unlimited user licenses. If a professor assigns a text and a link to the library record for an e-book with a single-user license, this can result in frustration for students who cannot access the book if the maximum number of other patrons are simultaneously using it. But everything you find via Faculty Select should be suitable for adoption. If you are not finding what you are looking for, please consult with a librarian!

  • The Hannon Library can only purchase what the publishers make available with institutional licensing. (This may not include titles that are available via Kindle.) For more details, please read the Open Letter to LMU Faculty about Textbooks and Library Collections, shared in Fall 2020.

  • Ideally, every e-book that the library has would allow for unrestricted downloading, sharing, printing, and reading. But we are limited by the licenses that the publishers make available. Some are more permissive than others, and it varies by title. Here’s a good help guide with information about printing and downloading from e-books. 

Contact

Please contact your departmental library liaison or the OATI project coordinator, Karna Younger at karna.younger@lmu.edu.

The William H. Hannon Library is grateful to the Office of the Provost, the LMU Bookstore, the Academic Technology Committee, and the Center for Faculty Development for their support of this initiative.  

Why Use Open Educational Resources?

OER are openly-licensed teaching and learning tools (e.g., textbooks) that are free to students. Zero cost. Instructors can modify OER to meet the specific needs of their course, including inviting students to contribute to (re)writing the textbook for future classes.
Assigning free textbooks is a simple way to make higher education more affordable and accessible for LMU students, who spend an average of over $1,305 per year on commercial textbooks. When students struggle to afford their course materials, their capacity for learning suffers. According to a 2026 study of 4,000 students, 70% of students skipped purchasing a textbook or access code at some point in their college career. Most of these students feared their grades would be negatively impacted simply because they could not afford to access the course materials.

In 2026, the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) recognized OER as a high-impact practice. OER benefit students by:

  • Lowering course withdrawal rates variable to institutional context;
  • Increasing the number of students earning A grades across all institutional contexts;
  • Improving time-to-completion outcomes for students who completed at least one OER-supported course, especially for those taking longer than four years to earn their credentials;
  • Supporting student success among historically underserved student populations;
  • Positively influencing instructors’ teaching and learning practices.