Gov. Gina Raimondo announced a new initiative last week that will help make textbooks more affordable for college students by making textbooks openly licensed. Raimondo’s plan hopes to save students $5 million dollars over the next five years. Openly licensed textbooks and open access resources are significantly cheaper than some textbooks used today. Rhode Island is the first state in the country where the state is helping sponsor this initiative, according to Karim Boughida, Dean of University Libraries at URI, who is also helping lead this initiate within the university. Some courses are already using open access resources. The next steps for URI will be educating faculty on how to obtain these resources. Rhode Island College has already saved around $100,000 by implementing openly licensed textbooks.
WATCH: Gov. Raimondo announces textbook initiative, URI pledges support
