In this interview, Dean Booth discusses the NYU Libraries' efforts to support the University's affordability initiative. Read the full exchange below.
In February 2016, President Hamilton named affordability a University priority. How have the NYU Libraries supported this initiative?
Our libraries have been developing extensive digital resources for at least a decade, and our digital academic collection is one of the country’s largest. We are an essential source of online course content, with licenses to more than 1.1 million ebooks, 121,000 journals, and 1,000 databases that contain articles, images, video, audio, data, and more. Our materials support every area of study throughout NYU and are freely accessible to every student. Our library specialists work with faculty across the University and assist them with material selection for their courses in digital or physical forms to help remove some barriers for students facing financial hardships.
Because of the pandemic, we have expanded our license agreement with HathiTrust to provide access to an additional million titles currently inaccessible while our stacks are closed to browsing. In non-pandemic times, when faculty wish to assign physical materials, we work with them to set up Course Reserves so students can borrow materials as an alternative to purchasing.
Over the past four years, NYU has reduced textbook costs by an average of 40 percent. How have the NYU Libraries contributed to this reduction?
The University worked on several fronts, including the campus bookstore and faculty outreach, to achieve this benchmark.
The Libraries assisted faculty outreach efforts with an informational campaign to help instructors find, use, and create affordable and open-access course content. We also have an online guide to Affordable and Open Educational Resources—materials freely available for public use, reuse, and modification.
What types of tools are available for research needs and discovery?
There are a few ways we support research for students and faculty at NYU. Affordable and open educational resources, our catalog and its improved features, citation tools, the Open Education Network, and HathiTrust, to name a few.
Are there any other ways the NYU Libraries have contributed to the University’s affordability initiative?
In 2019, the Bobst Library Computer Center piloted a program to alleviate the demand for student laptop loans. The University purchased 300 Chromebooks to support students experiencing financial hardships and didn’t have access to the necessary hardware to complete their coursework. The program provided week-long loans for students who opted in. Due to COVID-19, the program is currently on hold, but we hope to resume loans once it is safe for our users.
The interlibrary loan service allows our users to obtain materials from other libraries. These include materials not available at NYU or Consortium Libraries like books, articles, and more.
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