UA Libraries Adapt to Digital Resources

As more resources move online, Mullins Library is adapting its spaces for usage in the digital age. While many universities hop on this trend, the U of A is taking a new approach to accessing online resources.

Empty section in Mullins Library — After books were moved from Mullins Library to the off-campus Annex, the 4th floor of Mullins has opened up for more student usage. Photo by Hanna Ellington

By Hanna Ellington
The Razorback Reporter

In the digital age, Mullins Library is joining other institutions in increasing accessibility to online resources, while also maintaining print assets and physical spaces, librarians said.

More than 1.3 million volumes were removed from Mullins Library in July 2018 into an off-campus annex storage system, said Kelsey Lovewell, director of public relations.

“Moving items to the annex did not increase our need for virtual resources. We’ve been continuously adding to our physical and digital holdings for many years now,” she said.

Books housed in the annex must be requested online and delivered to either Mullins or one of four campus branches.

That system has frustrated some students.

“Honestly, I think the old-school system of just having books in the library that you can go and check out is probably for the best. I feel that because they’re not readily available, people are less likely to use those resources if they know it has to be ordered and delivered,” junior Ethan Barton said.

Mullins Library still houses 200,000 books, Lovewell said, adding that the books were selected to remain based on past usage and relevance to students.

“The books that were selected [for the annex] had not been checked out, I want to say, twice in the past 10 years,” Lovewell said. “We asked for faculty input across campus, we looked at usage statistics, and one important statistic we looked at what books were used in the library but not necessarily checked out.”

Using an off-campus storage space is common for universities, said Dennis Clark, Dean of Libraries. The high-density Library Annex is beneficial for the preservation of the books, with cooler temperatures and lower humidity rates for storage, Clark said.

“There’s not a research university library in this country that doesn’t have off-site storage,” Clark said. “Every significant institution is storing parts of their collection away from their central campus. It’s been the standard for three decades.”

Browsing the off-campus annex is reflective of online shopping, Lovewell said, with books being displayed on online shelves for an experience similar to searching for books in a physical library.

“In today’s day and age, I feel like we’re all very accustomed to online shopping, you know, watching Netflix, browsing for different shows we want to watch. What’s really seamlessly integrated with that is our virtual browsing tool,” Lovewell said. “Our virtual browsing tool puts them on a shelf with other books in the same category so that you can see as though it were in person and open stacks.”

Communication with librarians also has expanded, with lines of communication being available in text messages, phone calls and e-mail form, said Beth Juhl, the Web Services Librarian. Accessibility reaches worldwide as librarians from around the world work in a cooperative group to assist students online.

“We have a cooperative with librarians all over the world. When we’re asleep, the librarians in Australia pick up our questions, and when they’re asleep, we pick up their questions,” Juhl said. “That is a cooperative so students can come into a chat service and ask a question of a librarian anytime, 24/7.”

The shift toward online integration may seem like a loss of libraries, but that’s not the case to Clark, Juhl or Lovewell.

*Book shelves sit empty in the library on the 4th floor of Mullins Library. Photo by Hanna Ellington*

“If you look at the trend across research libraries and research universities now, the idea that libraries are somehow losing use or losing relevance because of the access to digital resources is widely off,” Clark said. “Every other institution I’ve been in, as we’ve increased the amount of digital resources and as we’ve moved books away from the center part of campus, we’ve seen more use of space.

“Sure, we’ve got books, but we also have spaces that are more engaging,” he said.

As more resources become available online, libraries are using the opportunity to renovate the existing space for improved resources for students.

“We have plans that we will be able to talk about in more depth very soon for a two-phase renovation that will renovate all floors of Mullins in the next five to six years,” Clark said. “So I think what we’ll see is kind of a redefinition of the spaces.”

“Yes, we’ll have a significant print collection in Mullins,” Clark said, “but we’ll also have spaces that are actually made for today’s level of teaching and learning, and spaces that are agile enough for them to evolve in the future.”
Moving forward, Mullins Library is set to transform with the trends of the digital age, Juhl said, but that doesn’t mean libraries will cease to exist.
“I think that they think that a library is just a warehouse of books, which is not what we are. We are services, and we are connections to recorded knowledge,” Juhl said. “That’s never going to go out of style.”

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article reported that moving items to the Library Annex increased the need for virtual resources. This is a clarification.

Library, Global Campus Working to Reduce Textbook Costs

With college textbook costs on the rise, a UA program is promoting digital materials in place of physical textbooks in order to reduce costs for students.

The cost of a used finance textbook totals over $150 in the UA Bookstore — Textbooks in the UA Bookstore range in cost, but this book for Personal Finance Management would cost students anywhere from $150-$200, depending on the condition purchased. Photo by Hanna Ellington

The Library and Global Campus are working together to reduce textbook costs by giving students access to digital materials that are adopted, adapted or created by faculty.

The materials, known as Open Educational Resources, or OERs, are openly licensed educational materials, according to the library’s website. Students get access at a free or minimal cost to online materials, like books or articles.

“What’s great about open educational resources is that you can create a textbook and license it under a creative commons license and anyone can use it for free, or for a small fee,” said Kelsey Lovewell, public relations director. “So, we have a program that incentivizes faculty across campus to adopt, adapt, or create their own open educational resources, and the goal for that is that their students won’t have to pay for textbooks, or if they do, the cost will be nominal.”

A Massachusetts community college uses open-access books in three of the six required general education courses. Students spent as little as $31 for three courses, as opposed to the national average of $153 per course, according to CBS Moneywatch.

Students on average spend $1,200 annually on books and supplies, according to The College Board.

“I’ve always been frustrated with the texts that I use in my class, much less the texts that are available out there in the world, mostly because of their cost,” said Russell L. Sharman, an Assistant Professor of Communication, who is creating his own OER. “I have 200 students per section in that class, and I teach two sections a semester, so I have 400 students paying up to $100 each, which often means they don’t buy the book at all and hope they can just skate by. That completely disrupts my approach to the course.”

The opportunity to save money is a driving force behind OERs. In the 2018-2019 school year, OERs saved students an estimated $162,000, up from just $11,900 saved the year prior, according to the Mullins Library Open Educational Resources Savings Report.

Textbook costs rose 88 percent in 10 years, according to a study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Students must decide on whether to buy a textbook they might never use or save the money, said Jared Pinkerton, Associated Student Government President.

“[Students] hurt themselves because they can’t afford to buy a textbook that costs as much as a gold bar,” Pinkerton said. “Education needs to be equitable, and open education resources is a push for equity in textbooks, and that’s important.”

Multiple books on the shelves in the UA Bookstore — Some books in the UA Bookstore can be rented, giving some students the option to spend less on a textbook they may not use again. Photo by Hanna Ellington.

The concept of reduced-cost textbooks has benefited both students and the UofA, Pinkerton said. While students also pay less for their textbooks, a proposed $10 fee for using open educational resources would support grants and fund the department that is using the OERs.

“That way, every dollar of these OERs is literally being put to benefit the students,” Pinkerton said.

“There’s some stigma around free, right, that free is lesser for some reason, in [faculty] eyes. It comes to talking them into it and showing them how much of an impact it can have on students.”

Most OERs are digital textbooks that can be downloaded and printed, increasing accessibility to the material, said Elaine Thornton, the Open Education and Distance Learning Librarian. Material access will not end with the end of term, Thornton said, allowing students to continue to learn past their enrollment in the class.

“If a class adopts an OER, everyone gets it automatically online, for free, [and] always will be free. The faculty can use it, they can change it,” Thornton said.

In some cases, a physical textbook hinders students’ learning, Sharman said. Sharman is creating a digital textbook for introduction to film lecture courses to increase students’ accessibility and interaction with the material, Sharman said.

“It became pretty obvious to me, not only that this made sense for this course because it would be free, but the course content is rooted in motion pictures, which a two-dimensional text or book can’t really approximate,” Sharman said. “So being able to have integrated video, links to videos, you know, actual content that is connected to the course, is pretty exciting.”

The program has been in effect for two years. It compensates professors, dependent on whether they adopt an open educational resource, adapt materials from existing resources, or create and license a new open educational resource, Thornton said.

The compensation is used to supplement faculty for their efforts, Thornton said. University Libraries and Global Campus pay faculty from $3,000 to $7,500, in multiple phases for implementation.

“The library sees value in it in that we’re helping faculty create resources, which then go into our institutional repository, so it’s kind of a digital publishing arm of it, which is another aspect of OER,” Thornton said.

“We are providing compensation and assistance to faculty who reduce the costs of textbooks for their students by making these materials open for use by everyone,” Lovewell said.