Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 70.78
Liaison Julia Carlow
Submission Date July 25, 2024

STARS v2.2

American University of Sharjah
IN-41: Textbook Affordability

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.50 / 0.50 Julia Carlow
Acting Head of Sustainability
Sustainability
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution host a peer-to-peer textbook exchange program, textbook lending library, or alternate textbook project?:
Yes

A brief description of the textbook exchange program, textbook lending library, or alternate textbook project:

  • The AUS Library acquires copies of all textbooks and supplementary reading material for student loan. Textbooks are available in a special Textbook collection available to all students for short term loan/scanning.  Where possible we license textbooks as multi-user ebooks (not all publishers will license e-textbooks to libraries). 

  • All students have printing/photocopying credit and scanning is free of charge. Printing/photocopying/scanning is permitted within copyright restrictions.

  • Sponsored students have their textbook fees covered by their sponsors


Does the institution provide incentives for academic staff that explicitly encourage the authorship, peer review, and/or adoption of open access textbooks?:
Yes

A brief description of the incentives to encourage the authorship, peer review, and/or adoption of open access textbooks:

  • The AUS Library catalog includes open textbook providers such as the Open Textbook Library from the Open Education Network (https://open.umn.edu/oen). 

  • libguide on using open educational resources is shared with faculty that includes a section on finding Open Textbooks.


Website URL where information about the textbook affordability incentives is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
---

Data source(s) and notes about the submission:

Information received from Kara Jones, University Librarian, on May 23, 2024


The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.