When she talks to her son about "library stuff," Millie Gonzalez, the interim director of Framingham State University's Whittemore Library, said his eyes usually glaze over. But her new project on how to reduce the cost of textbooks for students and make them more culturally relevant has piqued his interest. "He was like, 'What? Free textbooks?'" said Gonzalez, laughing. A consortium of colleges led by Framingham State University, as well as the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, has received a $440,000 federal grant from the U.S. Department of Education for a new project that aims to boost the number of college courses that make use of free Open Educational Resources rather than costly textbooks.
