Creating Open Textbooks: a unique partnership between Oregon State University Libraries and Press and Open Oregon State

This article presents Oregon State University’s experience launching an innovative Open Textbook initiative in spring 2014. The partners, Open Oregon State and the Oregon State University Libraries and Press, aimed to reduce the cost of course materials for students while ensuring the content created was peer-reviewed and employed multimedia capabilities. This initiative sought to showcase existing and emerging disciplinary strengths of the University thus creating unique course content that could be shared globally. This article briefly describes the U.S. landscape for open textbook creation and adoption. It demonstrates how this unique partnership has developed, covering barriers and benefits, and what the future could hold for new projects.