Recognizing the importance of affordability in education, in 2017 Franklin University implemented its etextbook initiative. The goal of the etextbook initiative is to provide students with online access to textbooks and to lower textbook costs.
As part of the etextbook initiative, courses may use ebooks licensed through the library, or open educational resources, which are available to students at no cost. Librarians work with faculty and course designers to identify titles which the library can purchase for use in courses, or which are available for use under an open license. Franklin University currently (fall 2024) uses 382 library etextbooks and 46 OER or other external free ebooks as textbooks in courses. You can see additional information about courses using library/OER etextbooks and student savings resulting from this use on our library/OER etextbook use dashboard.
When new textbooks are adopted for a course, the library receives notice and checks whether the new textbook can be made available to students as a free library textbook. As of Fall, 2024, 43% of courses with textbooks use either library textbooks or OER textbooks.
For additional information about the Franklin University Library's etextbook program, see Jaffy, M. (2023). Free Via Library (FVL) Etextbooks: Enhancing Affordable Learning by Involving an Academic Library in the Textbook Selection Process. Journal of New Librarianship, 8(2), 41-56.