BILL ANALYSIS Ó ------------------------------------------------------------ |SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | SB 1053| |Office of Senate Floor Analyses | | |1020 N Street, Suite 524 | | |(916) 651-1520 Fax: (916) | | |327-4478 | | ------------------------------------------------------------ THIRD READING Bill No: SB 1053 Author: Steinberg (D), et al. Amended: 5/25/12 Vote: 21 SENATE EDUCATION COMMITTEE : 7-0, 4/11/12 AYES: Lowenthal, Alquist, Hancock, Liu, Price, Simitian, Vargas NO VOTE RECORDED: Runner, Blakeslee, Huff, Vacancy SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE : 5-2, 5/24/12 AYES: Kehoe, Alquist, Lieu, Price, Steinberg NOES: Walters, Dutton SUBJECT : California Open Source Digital Library SOURCE : Author DIGEST : This bill establishes the California Open Source Digital Library (COSDL) for the purpose of housing open source materials. ANALYSIS : Existing law: 1. Requires, beginning January 1, 2020, any person, firm or corporation that publishes textbooks offered for sale at the University of California (UC), California State University (CSU), California Community Colleges (CCC) or CONTINUED SB 1053 Page 2 a private college or university to make the textbooks available for sale in an electronic format. 2. Requires the CSU and CCC, and encourages the UC, to work with the academic senates of each segment to encourage faculty to give consideration to the least costly practices in assigning textbooks and to work with publishers and college bookstores. 3. Requires college bookstores to work with the academic senates of each campus to review the process and timelines involved in ordering and stocking textbooks and to create bundles and packages of instructional materials that are economically sound. 4. Urges textbook publishers to provide specific information to faculty and post that information on the company's Web site, give preference to supplements rather than producing a new edition and disclose the length of time the current edition is intended to be in production. 5. Requires the CSU, and requests the UC, to review and revise student transfer policies to ensure that faculty may choose a textbook selected for a transfer or general education course, regardless of publication date, for as long as the textbook is available, current and reflects contemporary thinking. This bill specifies that the COSDL shall be administered by the CSU, in coordination with the CCC and the UC (if the UC Regents take action to approve the activity). This bill is operative only if funds are appropriated in the Budget Act, or if federal or private funds are made available, or any combination thereof. This bill requires that the materials in the library bear a creative commons attribution license that allows others to use, distribute, and create derivative works based upon the digital material while still allowing the authors or creators of the material to receive credit for their efforts. This bill becomes operative only if SB 1052 (Steinberg) CONTINUED SB 1053 Page 3 becomes operative on or before January 1, 2013, and establishes the California Open Education Resources Council. Background Open education resources (OER) are either licensed under an open copyright license or are in the public domain. OER includes full courses, course textbooks and materials, modules, videos, simulations, and tests. Open source gives free access to the material as well as permission to revise, reuse, remix and redistribute the materials at no cost. Existing digital libraries . The UC administers the California Digital Library which provides access to a digitized worldwide collection of research, books, journals, government publications and maps, allows faculty to publish articles and communicate with other scholars, but does not include textbooks and materials that are placed by faculty on reserve at the campus bookstore. Faculty may have students use material from the digital library but those materials are not necessarily the textbook of record. The CSU administers the Affordable Learning Solutions, which is a web-based system that houses Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT), the Digital Marketplace and other tools that enable faculty and students to search for free or low-cost materials, faculty to be recognized for work as well as communicate with other scholars. Textbooks and materials that are placed by faculty on reserve at the campus bookstore are not included in MERLOT. Faculty may have students use material from the digital library but those materials are not necessarily the textbook of record. In 2003, the Foothill-De Anza Community College District received a one-time grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for Sharing of Free Intellectual Assets project, which created freely available course materials for eight college courses using a mixture of open education resource and conventional commercial learning materials. Existing law authorized the CCC to establish a pilot CONTINUED SB 1053 Page 4 program to provide to faculty with the information, methods and instructional materials to establish open education resources centers. It appears that both projects were halted due to budgetary constraints. The College Textbook Transparency Act requires, beginning January 1, 2010: 1. Textbook publishers to print on the cover or within each textbook a summary of the substantive content differences between the new and prior editions, and the copyright date of the previous edition. 2. Each campus bookstore at any public college or university to post in its store or on its Web site a disclosure of its retail pricing policy on new and used textbooks. 3. Each public college or university to encourage personnel responsible for selecting course materials (typically faculty) to place their orders with sufficient lead time to enable the bookstore to confirm the availability of the requested materials. (Education Code § 66406.7) FISCAL EFFECT : Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes Local: No According to the Senate Appropriations Committee: Start-up costs likely in the low millions of dollars; ongoing costs of $400,000 to CSU. Exact costs will be determined by the choices made by the California Open Education Resources Council, which is given the authority to oversee the COSDL. Potentially substantial (ongoing) reimbursable mandate on the CCCs; the system's participation is required, and CCCs are eligible to seek reimbursement for state-mandated activities. SUPPORT : (Verified 5/25/12) AFSCME California Community Colleges Board of Governors CONTINUED SB 1053 Page 5 California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office California State University Office of the Chancellor Campaign for College Opportunity Coast Colleges Community College League of California Student Senate for California Community Colleges ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT : According to the author, "The cost of attending California's public colleges and universities has skyrocketed in recent years. While fees often tend to be the most visible cost, other non-tuition related costs, like the cost of textbooks, significantly burden students and families as well. Recent studies show that due to the cost of textbooks, many students forego purchasing them altogether. Through Open Education Resources (OER), California can offer students in the 50 most widely taken lower-division courses, the highest quality textbooks and related materials for free online or for about $20 hardcopy. It also allows faculty to customize learning materials in a manner that best suit their classroom learning objectives." PQ:mw 5/25/12 Senate Floor Analyses SUPPORT/OPPOSITION: SEE ABOVE **** END **** CONTINUED