BILL ANALYSIS Ó
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
SB 1328 (DeLeon) - Postsecondary Education: Textbooks.
Amended: April 18, 2012 Policy Vote: Education 8-1
Urgency: No Mandate: No
Hearing Date: May 24, 2012 Consultant: Jacqueline
Wong-Hernandez
SUSPENSE FILE. AS PROPOSED TO BE AMENDED.
Bill Summary: SB 1328 requires a publisher that supplies
textbooks or other instructional material to a postsecondary
institution to provide specific information about that textbook
or material using a standard XML or comma-delimited format, or
both, and requires publishers to submit the data to the
Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
(MERLOT) program.
Fiscal Impact: Amendments remove requirements on the CSU; this
bill is unlikely to result in additional state costs.
Background: The federal Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA)
requires publishers (when providing information to faculty or
others who select course materials at an institution of higher
education receiving federal financial assistance) to include in
writings specific price and format information, as well as
details concerning previous editions of the text, including a
description of substantial content revisions.
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 website a disclosure of its
retail pricing policy on new and used textbooks.
3) Each public college or university to encourage personnel
SB 1328 (DeLeon)
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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)
Proposed Law: This bill requires textbook publishers to provide
the following information about textbooks or materials using a
standard XML or comma-delimited format, or both, and requires
publishers to submit the data to the MERLOT program: (a) book
title; (b) author; (c) publisher; (d) ISBN; (e) retail price;
(f) edition; and (g) copyright date. It requires that the data
be made available for public use.
Staff Comments: This bill requires textbook publishers to
provide the specific information listed previously to the MERLOT
program of CSU, and requires that the data be "available for
public review and use". This implies, but does not necessarily
require that the information be stored and displayed within
MERLOT.
The CSU has opined that MERLOT is not the appropriate place for
this data. Should it be required to be stored in MERLOT, the
costs to the CSU would be higher than those identified in the
Fiscal Impact because the CSU would have to complete additional
programming and design work on MERLOT to accommodate this data.
If the CSU could determine how to best meet the data
requirements of the bill, it projects a one-time CSU cost of
approximately $250,000 to design a different system specific to
this bill, as well as $300,000-$400,000 to provide ongoing
project management and support, based on the likely
functionality needs of the new system.
Proposed Author Amendments: Remove the requirement that the CSU
receive data in the MERLOT program and make it available for
public review and use.