With the cost of textbooks increasing every year, NCSU Libraries is launching the Alt-Textbook Project, a program designed to provide grants to any faculty member who wishes to offer free or low-cost textbooks as an alternative to more expensive materials.

William Cross, director of the Copyright and Digital Scholarship Center, and David Hiscoe, director of Communication Strategy and External Relations for NCSU Libraries, designed the program to help make required course books cheaper and more accessible.

“We are focusing on technology and outcomes to improve work and textbook costs,” Cross said. “We are also working with University of Massachusetts Amherst and Temple University to forward this initiative more.”

The idea has existed at NC State for several years, beginning when Professor Michael Paesler created an online physics book document, which close to 1,300 students are still accessing it.

This will be NC State’s first year implementing the new incentive grant program. 

Faculty members, as well as students, have expressed interest in the program and creating their own materials.

“We have had four workshops for faculty and at least 15 showing up to each workshop,” Cross said.

To apply for the grant, interested faculty members will have to apply online through the Library’s Alt-Textbook application. Interested faculty members must complete an application for the grant that helps evaluate a proposal on the basis of how much money a professor plan to save students, his or her educational impact and whether or not the applicant is doing something interesting and innovative.

“[Faculty members] are the experts. We give them the tools, and the library is glad to license it,” Hiscoe said.

Hiscoe said student evaluations are going to be a key factor as to whether or not the textbook or resources need to be reevaluated or kept going. 

The deadline to submit the application is Oct. 20 and the proposals will be approved or denied in November. The proposed alternative textbook will have to be ready to implement either the spring or fall semester of 2015.

“We work in student time,” Cross states. “If this goes well, [applicants] have the opportunity to get funded again.”

When creating resources for the class, applicants are not limited to what they can develop.

“We want to give them as many different options as possible, whether that be through Moodle, Crowd Source, Wiki, or anything else,” Cross said. “We even have a staff member who is using Pinterest … We are also planning on partnering with other distributing sources such as Lulu or the Bookstore to create an openness in distribution.”

Professors creating textbooks through the Alt-Textbook program will not be able to make a profit from their textbooks.  

“If they are commercially distributing, it will be very unlikely that they will receive the grant,” Cross said.

Cross said the program aims to give professors the best tools possible to help keep textbook prices low while also producing a quality informational tool. 

“If this professor likes lecturing he can have a textbook centered on his teaching style, not department by department,” Cross said.  “Students in the end will be able to choose the professor that matches his or her preferences.”

 “It seems to be inevitable if faculty would want to have something particularly customized to their class,” Hiscoe said. “When I was teaching this intro lit course, there were many parts of the book I did not even like.”

The only drawback to this grant program is the fact that this program is still in its first year, according to Cross.

“Because this is something very experimental, we will do our best to test before we put anything out there,” Cross said. “We will be expecting a few stumbles along the way.”

“How people get information is changing dramatically, and it’s very fun to be in the middle of this revolution,” Hiscoe said.