[4] The project was funded by matching grants of $750,000 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Washington State legislature.
[9] The project was headed by Cable Green, then eLearning Director for the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.
The process, which led to production of the materials, was open and several preliminary Town Meetings were used employing Eluminate Live.
Topics for discussion included interactions with publishers, content presentation, copyright policies, and various Creative Commons licenses.
Both directly and indirectly, Cable Green, the project's then director, observed that it has resulted in the building of networks with like-minded individuals and institutions irrespective of geography.
[18] Community college tuition is lower than at most traditional four-year institutions, and, therefore, textbook costs may be proportionally higher.
In this way it seeks to respond positively to the "completion" concerns outlined in the state's tipping point research report of 2008.
[20] On 17 June 2010 the Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges (SBCTC) approved a state-level open licensing policy.
[21] All digital works created using grant funds administered by SBCTC must now carry a Creative Commons Attribution-only (CC BY) license.
Nicole Allen, a textbook advocate for the national Student Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) commended the state for putting its money where its mouth is.
[23] The results are reported in Affordable Textbooks for Washington Students: An Updated Cost Analysis of the Open Course Library (2013),[24] an update of Affordable Textbooks for Washington's Students: A Cost Analysis of the Open Course Library (2011).
"[29] However, Marty Brown, executive director of the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges, took exception in a Chronicle of Higher Education piece he explained: "The study analyzes the use of OCL materials based on adoption information from campus bookstores.
This methodology provides an incomplete picture, as bookstores are not always aware when faculty members assign free, digital resources.
For instance, Bellevue College, Washington, the state's largest community college, with help with a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, purchased 500 inexpensive netbook laptop computers in November 2011 for its students to rent for $35 per quarter to "download and read Internet material."
North Dakota proposed a resolution asking faculty and college administrations to support the use of open textbooks.
Further, the Trade Adjustment Community College and Career Training grants program requires that all material created using federal funds be available to the public through an open license.
Project Kaleidoscope intends to modify OCL materials to meet the needs of California's community college students.