Kaitlyn Hughes | news editor

Duquesne student Julia Jusino was relieved when she found out that she wouldn’t have to pay for textbooks in one of her international relation classes this semester.

“It’s a blessing to, number one, not have to worry about finding the correct textbook for a class, and number two, it was nice to not have to drop all the extra cash,” said Jusino, who is a sophomore double majoring in international security and political science.

The coursework for her class, which is taught by Rev. John Sawicki, is available at Gumberg Library through the Syllabus Project. The project asks faculty to supply their course syllabi, so they can purchase all readings listed and make them available to students.

This is a part of a greater push from Gumberg to create open educational resources, which are free course materials for students.

“The idea is education is a right. Everybody should have access to it, and they should have equal and equitable access to it,” said Arthur Harper, the online learning & STEM librarian at Gumberg. “When we have things like cost of textbooks and cost of course materials that is putting up a barrier to education that folks who can’t afford those materials can’t access the education.”

Harper is conducting a survey to see what students’ thoughts are on textbook prices, if they have purchased textbooks they haven’t used and if they have been in classes where educational resources are free. It is open until Feb. 20.

Harper said the survey provides a safe space for students to address concerns about expensive course material.

“I think it’s important for students to complete this survey because they need to be heard,” he said. “Nobody has to put their name on it, but you can still tell us ‘Hey, this is a problem that we want fixed.’”

Harper said that about 50 students have filled out the survey so far.

This topic is personal to Harper because he graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2022 with a Master’s in library and information science, and now he is struggling with debt.

“It’s a huge problem, and anything that we can do at the library to help with that, I think is important for us to do,” he said.

The goal of the survey is to make sure the library has been helping students to spend less money on education, since they did an initial survey in 2018 where 500 students submitted responses.

Since then, the library has begun open education initiatives, such as the syllabus project and online book collections.

They also offer the open textbook writing program, which allows for faculty to write their own textbooks for class. The material is then available online for free.

David Nolfi, head of research for engagement for the health sciences/STEM initiatives and assessment, said that libraries have been facing the prospect that books were becoming more expensive, so open educational resources help the library and students save money.

These resources also go along with the library’s central mission, Nolfi said.

“One of our goals in the library has always been to try to contribute to affordability,” Nolfi said. “In libraries, we really believe we really believe in what we can do to save students money on the back end. We know you’re paying a lot in tuition, and we know you’re paying a lot for books, and our goal is to help your education more affordable.”

The survey about textbooks and open educational resources can be found here. All participants of the updated survey can opt into a drawing to win one of 10 buckets of Pittsburgh Popcorn.

Kaitlyn Hughes can be reached at hughesk10@duq.edu