Sign our petition to support the Open College Textbook Act of 2009

Please sign this letter to your Congressmen encouraging Congress to support openly licensed textbooks by voting for the Open College Textbooks Act of 2009. You can learn more about the Open College Textbooks Act right here on New Media Rights! Just enter your name above to support open education.

Dear Congressman,

I am writing as a citizen concerned with the fact that the cost of textbooks commonly acts as a deterrent to students'pursuit of a college education. I support, and encourage you to support, S.1714 because offering grants to promote the creation of open textbooks would help further the goal of increasing college affordability in the United States. Having more openly licensed textbooks would raise the level of competition in the text book market and lower prices for students.

By laying out a competitive process that rewards the structure, quality, and accuracy,of projects, S. 1714, if passed, would help to ensure that students have access to materials of comparable quality to those that they currently cannot afford. Encouraging open licensing of educational materials has the potential to engage the widespread public's interest and input in creating cost-effective, up-to-date texts.

Making these texts widely available in an open format would help lower persistent barrier of access to knowledge and learning, and demonstrate the effectiveness of using open licensing in the educational field.

Thank you for your consideration of this important matter.