Whip Up a Statewide Team of Affordable Learning Ambassadors

In 2016, OhioLINK, Ohio’s statewide higher education library consortium, reached out to its member library deans and directors asking for suggestions about emerging demands that might be addressed at the statewide level. Library leadership expressed a need to address textbook affordability and to explore how libraries and OhioLINK could lead the charge to make course materials more affordable. OhioLINK developed a multi-faceted strategy, based on a long history of determining different pathways that could work for different institutions depending on funding, staffing, faculty interest, and administrative support. The first course of action was to “whip up” a team of library champions to help support the affordable learning efforts led by OhioLINK.