College students are notorious for finding new and creative ways to save money. To try to help students in this venture, WashPIRG recently kicked off its Make Textbooks Affordable campaign to raise awareness about open textbooks, which could potentially help offset the cost of rising tuition.

Open textbooks are free textbooks made available online by their authors with printed copies available for as little as $10.

Available at flatworldknowledge.com, the company boasts: “We preserve the best of the old — books by leading experts that are rigorously reviewed and developed to the highest standards. ... We offer convenient, low-cost choices for students ... Our books are open for instructors to mix, mash and make their own.”

WashPIRG hopes to get UW professors to use this resource so students don’t have to empty their pocketbooks for a textbook they’ll barely use, said Jason Padvorac, a senior involved in the campaign.

The textbooks are environmentally friendly and printed copies are recyclable. The books are peer-reviewed and some are used at schools such as Harvard and Yale.

“I think open books separates us from dependence on an institutional system of publishing, to a more collaborative system,” wrote freshman Mario Lemafa in an e-mail. “This is awesome because the new way of thinking about how we receive knowledge allows many groups to be involved in the formation of a cohesive education for students, professors and their peers that would be cost-beneficial as well as flexible.”

Meg Gardner, the campus organizer for WashPIRG, said students need to generate faculty support for open textbooks, which can in turn generate a greater diversity of subjects available.

The campaigners hope to first raise awareness by tabling, sending out e-mails and meeting with academic advisors, professors and student leaders from all the UW departments. Members and volunteers will then actively work with professors to see the benefits of open textbooks and minimize work and effort in finding an appropriate text for the course.

“As open textbooks become widespread, more institutional support and grants will be available to support authors who avoid corporate publishers,” Padvorac said. “The corporations, though, are in trouble and will have to undergo major reforms if they want to compete with open textbooks.”

While the University Book Store already works hard to save students money by pricing textbooks at lower costs than other college stores, providing used textbooks, and offering digital versions of textbooks and textbook buyback, open textbooks can help further this cause.

“The Book Store actively pursues all reasonable opportunities for students to save money on course materials, regardless of how popular or widespread they may be,” said Bryan Pearce, CEO of the University Book Store, in an e-mail. “If faculty members choose an open-source textbook, we would work to find the most convenient and cost-effective ways to make hard-copy versions of these titles available to students.”

Last fiscal year, the Book Store helped students save $4.3 million through a combination of used book activity and the rebate program. There are still ways to further increase this, Pearce said.

Lemafa also hopes to initiate a campus-wide scanning program for the UW libraries that would make all books, including textbooks, owned by the UW available online for easier research and study.

Reach reporter Doris Wu at news@dailyuw.com.