This book is an introduction to the study of U.S. Public Policy designed for undergraduate students.  I wrote it both to provide my students with access to an affordable textbook and to provide them with a textbook that emphasizes the development of skills for writing in the field of public policy.  While much of the content is relevant to college students at any institution, there are parts of the book that are targeted specifically to students at Gustavus Adolphus College (my institution) and/or students in Minnesota.  These parts are written in blue text.

Instructors from other institutions are welcome to use this textbook as is.  If that is the case for you, simply provide the URL to your students.  Students can read the book online or download a PDF from the main page and print out a paper copy.  If you are using the book as is, I’d love to hear about your experience and am open to any feedback you may have for improving the book.  (This link will take you to a feedback form where you can leave anonymous feedback.  If you are a faculty member or public policy practitioner who is interested in collaborating on this project, you can also use the feedback form to contact me.)

However, as an open access book, you are also welcome to tailor it to your needs and your students.  The Creative Commons license for this book (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommericial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License) allows you to “clone” the book and then revise that copy to distribute to your students, as long as you provide appropriate attribution, don’t sell it, and use the same Creative Commons license for your version (CC BY-NY-SA 4.0).

The process of cloning is very easy and I’ve also tried to make it easy for you to customize the book by putting pieces that are specific to Gustavus or to Minnesota in blue text so that they’re easy to locate and replace.  Here are instructions for how to clone and modify this book:

Instructions for Cloning

1. You must first set up a Pressbooks account.  Most academic institutions have access to Pressbooks through their libraries, so check with a librarian if you are unsure.
2. Once you’ve logged in, click the “+Clone Book” button located in the top right corner of the screen or the “Adapt a book” button on the bottom right of the screen.
3. Enter the URL for this book: https://mlpp.pressbooks.pub/introtouspublicpolicy/
4. Enter the new book URL.  I recommend you use the original URL plus your institution name.  For example, https://mlpp.pressbooks.pub/introtouspublicpolicy/Gustavus.
5. Click “Clone Book”

Here are step-by-step video instructions for this process: https://media.bccampus.ca/playlist/dedicated/175668/0_t52z20jd/0_yeimn6br

Instructions for Modifying

Once you have created a copy (clone) of the original book, you can modify the content to suit your needs.  This might include deleting unnecessary chapters, removing irrelevant portions of chapters, or adding in new material.  I encourage you to add your own photos, profiles of your former students, and information specific to your state.

Here’s a guide to creating and editing chapters in Pressbooks: https://guide.pressbooks.com/chapter/create-and-edit-chapters/

You can find video tutorials for using Pressbooks here: https://www.youtube.com/user/pressbooks

Whether you use my version or customize it, I hope you and your students enjoy this book and learn a lot from it about public policy!

Kate