Overall Rating Silver
Overall Score 60.56
Liaison Mari Acob-Nash
Submission Date Oct. 30, 2021

STARS v2.2

North Seattle College
IN-41: Textbook Affordability

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.50 / 0.50 Adam Maurer
District Sustainability Coordinator
Finance and Ops
"---" 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:

At North Seattle College, the Center for Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity has a textbook lending program available for students with demonstrated financial need. The program provides a limited number of textbooks in the most heavily-enrolled courses. The program allows students to borrow textbooks for the entire quarter. (Note: The program is currently inactive, because campus is closed due to COVID-19)

The Running Start program maintains a collection of textbooks that they lend to Running Start students for the entire academic quarter.

North Seattle Library provides access to many of the required textbooks through the reserve check out system; usually for in-library use only. Short-term textbook loans account for approximately 60% of library check-outs across all campuses. For the most part, the Seattle Colleges libraries rely on instructors to donate personal copies of textbooks, although all 3 libraries (i.e., North, Central, and South) have occasionally been able to purchase copies of high-demand textbooks, either from funding provided by student government and/or academic departments, or by redirecting existing library funds. (Note: All short-term lending is currently suspended during the pandemic due to the risk of COVID-19 transmission, but the libraries have made some textbooks available for quarter-long loan on a first-come, first-served basis).

Additionally, for the last 5-6 years, the Research and Advocacy board has held a free book drive on the first two days of the quarter. They put up flyers advertising the drive and students just come by the table and see if there is anything that would work for them. They are encouraged to bring them back at the end of the quarter so that other students can use them, but returning them is not required. They usually give away up to 60 books depending on how many were donated.


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:

Seattle Colleges, which North Seattle College is a part of, faculty development grants can be used to support Open Education Resource (OER) and Low-Cost materials transition.


Website URL where information about the textbook affordability incentives is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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