SSC College Libraries Annual Review 2021-22

A significant barrier to student success, particularly at state colleges, is textbook affordability.  The College Libraries have been involved and supportive of a variety of textbook affordability initiatives over the past few years, particularly in the promotion of Open Educational Resources and leveraging multi-user licenses for library ebooks.  This past year we have piloted a new project that aims to transfer the long-established practice of print "textbooks on reserve" to the online environment.  Librarian Ross Martin has been leading this pilot, and describes it in more detail below.

Narrative by Ross Martin, Research and Instruction Librarian, Sanford/Lake Mary campus       

This year, the library began working with Controlled Digital Lending (CDL), a process that improves textbook affordability and increases access to important resources for students. CDL is a cutting-edge practice that allows libraries to create digital versions of books already in their collections, essentially transforming the format of the book without violating copyright rules.

Through CDL we are taking and scanning several high-use textbooks in our collection that have not previously been accessible in an electronic format. The library is using a KIC image scanner and software to upload scanned content to a server where it can be managed. Once a book has been scanned, we remove the physical copy from circulation, as we can’t use both the physical and digital format simultaneously.

Students use a software called MyDocs to read the scanned book. It’s a free tool that connects with our server and limits how students can interact with the material. Since we are largely trying to replicate the course reserves experience from our physical libraries, MyDocs functions as a lockdown browser so that we can set time and other access limits. Each student may check out a digital book for two hours, but upon the return, they are unable to renew it for 15 minutes.

We started the project by scanning some of the textbooks from high enrollment courses, including Speech, College Success, English, and Psychology. In addition, we have also scanned a couple of chapters from other books for specific instructors’ needs. Within CDL we have experimented with two formats: scanning an entire book and adding metadata to separate chapters, and scanning individual chapters. In both cases the links to the book or chapters are added to our library catalog, and those links can also be embedded in the college’s learning management system.