Stanford students may soon be able to access the content of course readers online if a proposal devised by two undergraduate senators is implemented by the University.

Enlarge
#gallery http://daily.stanford.edu/image/full/8731
Becca del Monte

ASSU senators are aiming to build a pilot program intended to determine the feasibility of creating a campus-wide electronic course reader system.

While the project is still in an early stage of development, ASSU undergraduate senators Eugene Nho ‘10 and Vang Kou Khang ‘08 have been in talks with the Stanford Bookstore and University administrators to assess the feasibility of digitizing course readers for access through the Coursework Web site. They hope to eliminate or greatly reducing the need for printed copies purchased through the Bookstore.

Nho and Khang said that their primary aim is to reduce costs for students. The cost of course readers, which contain materials compiled from various articles and text books, varies between courses but is often comparable to textbook prices.

“From our perspective, it’s one of the most effective ways to reduce costs for the greatest number of students,” Nho said. “Most students . . . buy at least one course reader, especially [those studying] HumBio and PoliSci.”

According to Lupe Barron, a manager at University Custom Publishing (UCP), which manages the printing of course readers for the Stanford Bookstore, the high cost is primarily due to high royalty fees to the authors.

Nho and Khang agreed that royalties are the most significant costs incurred in course reader publishing, but they said that there are many available cost-reducing strategies using pre-existing resources. In particular, Nho said that many course readers contain journal articles that are available through Stanford’s electronic publications licensing system that allows students to access the data of virtually any academic journal online. Nho said that printing course reader articles requires additional royalty payments for already accessible articles.

“For example, if there is a Polisci course reader which is 80 percent journal articles, if they go to the bookstore, then each student has to pay for those journal articles,” Nho said. “If you just upload it to Coursework, you don’t have to pay for 80 percent of the course reader for which we already have a license.”

Khang said that gaining approval of faculty has been essential to their initiative and that their current attempts have been bolstered by approval from the Faculty Senate.

“Two years ago when the idea came out, it was a good idea, but in terms of having everyone on the same page, we weren’t there yet,” Khang said. “Fortunately this year, it seems that the faculty senate is in for the idea.”

Nho noted, however, that the digitization initiative needs to be easily accessible to professors.

“The Faculty Senate told us that a lot of faculty members won’t have time to individually go over the readings and find them in the library and upload it themselves,” Nho said. “They would rather copy citations in one Word document, bring it to the bookstore and let them take care of it.”

Nho and Khang are currently in talks with representatives of various departments to develop a pilot program intended to determine the feasibility of creating a campus-wide electronic course reader system.

“[We senators are] going to sit down and go through all the course readers and see how much percentage of a given course reader is from journal articles,” Nho said. “Depending on the result, we will approach the appropriate department.”

While Nho is optimistic, he admitted that a fully functional system will take at least a year to implement. Khang said that the digitization initiative involves many different interests that would make it appealing to future senators.

“This is more than just costs,” Khang said. “It’s also about sustainability, reducing waste, saving trees, paper and so forth.”