With student concerns about the cost of coursebooks, electronic resources at the NYU Libraries are a great resource to save on student costs. Electronic and physical reserves provide students with text and literature for required and recommended reading lists. The availability of these resources in digital formats also helps remove some education barriers for students facing financial hardships.
The Knowledge Access & Resource Management Services (KARMS) and Access, Delivery & Resource Sharing Services (ADRSS) teams worked together to determine how the Libraries support the University’s affordability initiative. Because NYU Libraries pays for access to so many course-assigned materials, students saved an estimated $1M last spring alone. A team of library administrators—Nancy Lin, David Perry, Camelia Anghel, Rachel Pisciotta, and Bill Maltarich—worked with liaisons from the NYU Bookstore to compile online resources in a central location and quantify savings for students across the University.
“The NYU library data warehouse has an incredibly rich amalgamation of information taken from various systems at NYU,” said David Perry, senior programmer analyst for the NYU Libraries.
In February 2016, President Andrew Hamilton introduced budget changes that, for most undergraduate programs, lead to the smallest increase in the cost of attendance in over 20 years. He also appointed a committee to spearhead additional efforts to make studying at NYU more affordable for more students.
“We appreciate that the president's committee is working closely with the NYU Libraries to help reduce student costs,” said Nancy Lin, metadata technology specialist. “Each semester, the library reserves offer thousands of electronic coursebooks to students. I am excited about the newly launched Always Available Online tool—a resource that will help instructors choose library ebooks to assign to their students. We hope instructors continue to think about the impact of expensive coursebooks on student costs and work to reduce these costs where possible.”
To support the initiative, the library administrators worked to match bookstore lists of assigned materials with library purchases.
“At the beginning of each semester, our analysts take data from the bookstore, student registration, course reserves, and the library catalog and use match algorithms to find assigned coursebooks to promote to all students,” said Camelia Anghel, a senior systems data analyst. “We are happy to play such an important role in reducing costs for NYU students.”
The group proactively works with the bookstore to inform students of ebook availability through the library. The launch of the Always Available Online filter tool in the catalog closes the loop by allowing instructors to search more than 2.8 million ebooks, videos, and music from over 100 publishers and databases for their students to use at no additional cost. These multi-user resources allow all students in a class to use the materials at the same time. Instructors can add resources directly into their courses.
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