A Tale of Two [Open] Textbooks

Successful creation and adaptation of open textbooks relies on mastery of multiple parallel processes: analysis of market gaps and needs, author communication and negotiation, copyright/open licensing practices, funding and procurement, peer review processes, peer review and field-testing of texts, tools/technology for all stages of production and publication, project management, evaluation, and marketing.

This presentation compares and contrasts the decisions made throughout these parallel processes and how they were implemented before, during, and after the adaptation, creation, and revision of two open textbooks at our institution: Fundamentals of Business (2016) and Electromagnetics Vol 1 (Beta) (January 2018), and their subsequent revisions into the Pressbooks version and other formats of Fundamentals of Business, 2nd edition (2018) and final version of Electromagnetics Vol 1 (July 2018).

We describe the processes, decisions, and values that were considered in production, as well as the challenges, happy surprises, and lessons learned from these collaborative library projects. Projects were funded by the Open Education Faculty Initiative Grants at the University Libraries at Virginia Tech and produced in collaboration with VT Publishing.