Textbook Access Act of 2008
This page last updated on: July 30, 2017
The Baruch College Faculty Handbook
Last updated on 5/21/2009
From Bill Ferns, secretary of the Baruch College Faculty Senate (9/25/08)
During this past summer, the New York State Legislature passed the “Textbook Access Act of 2008.” Some of the salient point of this law are:
- It mandates that textbook publishers provide better pricing transparency to adoptes (i.e., faculty) of textbooks;
- It requires that textbooks be available sold as ordered
by faculty (i.e., textbooks cannot be bundled with items not included in the adoption), unless the unbundled items are also available); - It requires institutes of higher learning to implement
policies to get faculty to order their books earlier; - It defines the financial and material benefits faculty can and can not receive for adopting a text.
This law will go into effect on July 1, 2009. We have established links to several files pertaining to this law:
- The text of the law;
- The NYS Assembly’s synopsis of the law;
- A memo (September 2008) from Frederick Schaffer, CUNY’s Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs, with his analysis of the law and its requirements.
- Frederick Schaffer’s “legislation update” of May 2009.
Thanks for your time.
Yours,
Bill Ferns
Associate Professor of Computer Information Systems