Amanda Janke is the Textbook Affordability Fellow at the Atkins Library. She will be working to better understand how other colleges and universities are implementing Open Educational Resources (OERs) into their curriculum in the hopes that UNCC will be able to adapt them as well. This will allow students to have completely free textbooks, no matter the subject. UNCC is implementing First Day Complete in collaboration with Barnes and Noble this upcoming fall semester, which is a great start towards more affordable textbooks, but it is the hope that with the research Amanda is doing, it can be seen that completely free textbooks are better for students and faculty alike.
Amanda received her Bachelor's degree in History from Queens University of Charlotte and is currently getting her Master's in Library and Information Science from University of North Carolina at Greensboro. After interning at South Piedmont Community College's library during her first year of the MLIS program, who is also moving towards only using OERs, Amanda found a passion for textbook affordability. She is also interested in archives and special collections. She hopes to stay in an academic library environment once she has graduated.