Students are concerned about the rising costs of textbooks. Open textbooks can remedy some of the impact on student budgets.

Open textbooks are openly-licensed works that are freely available to everyone.

UT faculty are beginning to adopt open textbooks in their courses, and the Student Government Association, with the help of the Office of the Provost and the University Libraries, is tracking the resulting savings to students. The SGA has mounted giant thermometers around campus to measure the total savings.

On Wednesday, October 11, students gathered in Hodges Library to update the total registered on one of those thermometers. That total for 2017-18 has now surpassed half-a-million dollars!

Besides saving money for students, openly-licensed textbooks allow instructors to customize the texts for their courses by revising and remixing content without seeking additional permissions.

Librarians invite instructors to learn more about open textbooks, compare textbook options — from open textbooks to inclusive access to print books — and read about our campus open education leaders on the Libraries’ Open Educational Resources Portal.

We’ll be sharing more updates on our goal to saving students $1 Million, so stay tuned!