By Richard Ekman

To most college presidents, the controversies that embroil librarians, publishers, college book store managers, and computing center directors are too specialized for presidential involvement, but a deteriorating situation makes it compelling for campus leaders to become involved now. At stake is the viability of the materials that faculty members rely on for teaching and students use to learn.

To be sure, course syllabi have come a long way from the days when the paucity of affordable books meant that the professor’s lectures were the main source of course content. As early as the 1960s, the technology of inexpensive paperback publication allowed professors, especially in the humanities and social sciences, to assign as many as a dozen books per course, with the expectation that each student would buy most of them. In the sciences and in professional fields such as business where single textbooks were more common, then-new technologies allowed production of heavily illustrated, full-color editions that were nevertheless priced reasonably.

But over the past 20 years the situation changed. First, book prices increased, a result of both the rising cost of paper and other manufacturing and distribution costs, and of the practice of many publishers to issue too many monograph titles, each of which would likely sell only a small number of copies. Journal prices in the sciences also increased sharply. Then, in response, it became common for faculty members to assemble “coursepacks” as a way of saving their students’ money. It did not take long for copyright challenges to this practice to appear, however, with publishers arguing that coursepacks went beyond any reasonable “fair use” in the classroom. Meanwhile, some faculty members in the sciences and professional fields began to insist on assigning the most up-to-date version of a textbook, well before the print run of an expensive, slightly earlier edition had sold enough copies to justify the publisher’s initial investment. Libraries, forced to contend with rising prices, cut back their acquisitions, which in turn exacerbated the publishers’ difficulties.

In the last ten years, ever-newer technology has offered partial solutions. At its simplest, students now find it much easier to buy used books, thanks to a nationwide market of online advertisements that has displaced hand-printed flyers on dorm bulletin boards. Online substitutes for printed books and articles are now widely available. Some futurists believe that we will soon witness the dominance of a learning style among young people that will cause online course materials to replace printed books and journals. If a college or university subscribes to JSTOR or Project MUSE, for example, it can make a staggering quantity of older and current journal articles available to students. If a college uses a course management system (CMS), it can post course materials from a variety of digital—that is, “born digital”—and printed sources for all to use.

But some of these solutions have detracted further from sales of new books and journals. Defensive actions by publishers and their allies, such as the successive changes in intellectual property and copyright laws in the 1990s, have made it more difficult and expensive to use a wide range of materials in courses, whether online or in print. Two U.S. senators last year introduced a bill that would require all journal articles based on government-funded research to be available free of charge. And as the largest CMS provider increased the fees it charges to extremely high levels and claimed intellectual property rights that seemed overstated to many, EDUCAUSE took on this legal battle on behalf of all colleges and universities. Meanwhile, “open source” alternatives to for-profit CMS providers are also being developed and championed by many librarians. The Modern Language Association has recently suggested a new approach to academic publishing that recognizes the changing mix of print and nonprint outlets for scholarly writing, and changing markets. And the Association of American University Presses has issued a statement on “open access” that describes the delicate balance.

Presidents and deans usually know what faculty members on their own campuses are doing, and often there are institutional guidelines for the quantities and types of materials that may be required for a course. But presidents will need to do more to shape the discussions beyond their own campuses. Such national organizations as the Association of Research Libraries, the Association of College and Research Libraries, EDUCAUSE, the Association of American Publishers, the Association of American University Presses, the Council on Libraries and Information Resources, and the Coalition for Networked Information are all trying to shape a more rational system of information resources, but they have differing perspectives and a variety of interests to serve. Moreover, they are not the biggest players in this arena. Policies on copyright and fair use, especially for nonprint media, are shaped largely by the entertainment industry. Academic books, journals, and online resources are a surprisingly small component in the deliberations that shape information markets and laws.

What can presidents and chief academic officers do?

First, recognize that students need access to a wide variety of information sources and that the best teaching and learning take place when students must utilize multiple sources. Monolithic, “canned” course content has never been educationally sound.

Second, in an era when many students think a Google search is the same thing as research, campus leaders need to ensure that an appropriate combination of faculty members and librarians teach “information literacy”—namely, the ability to find, evaluate, and use information from disparate sources in order to make a coherent, well-documented argument. This entails a lot more than one morning of library orientation during freshman week. CIC’s Transformation of the College Library Workshops have, since 2004, helped more than 225 colleges develop such programs.

Third, be mindful that a lively, market-based system of publishing and disseminating materials for teaching and research is a good thing. Do not assume that all publishers are predatory price-gougers who must be opposed or that all alternatives to traditional publishing invented in the not-for-profit academic world will be good bets for the long run. We need a sustainable system of providing information for teaching and learning.

Fourth, speak out against current intellectual property laws that give unreasonably long protection to rights holders and needlessly limit classroom use of copyrighted materials.

Fifth, find ways to reward publishers who offer low-priced materials and faculty members whose assignments respect students’ budgets. Because pedagogies that encourage students to use multiple sources for papers are best, institutional patronage of such services as Google Book Search and JSTOR should be considered, as well as maintaining robust and cost-effective inter-library loan arrangements through consortia.

Sixth, recognize that large and small institutions of higher education have the same overriding interest in this subject. Admittedly, some research universities include scholarly presses that hope to make money from sales; are homes to faculty superstars whose royalties and advances from publications are substantial; and see the advancement of the frontiers of knowledge as a primary purpose. Yet the common interest of all colleges and universities is much more in faculty members and students as users of information, than as owners of information.

Now is the time for leaders of colleges and universities to try to ensure that a system of affordable and diverse resources for teaching and learning will exist in the future. Better understanding of the changes in the market and in prevailing technology, and a unified—and louder—voice from presidents and deans could make a critical difference.