The purpose of this study was to plan for, design, and launch the initial development phase of an affordable course materials initiative within the library at one Texas private four-year university. More specifically, the focus of the study centered on providing interested, volunteering academic faculty with the tools, resources, and expertise needed to utilize open educational resources (OER) or other low-cost and no-cost learning materials to improve students' access to high-quality educational resources and reduce the reliance and use of expensive, commercially produced textbooks. Further, this study explored how librarians, academic faculty, administrators, and other partners across this particular campus can work collaboratively to eliminate the economic barriers hindering the learning experiences of low-income and economically-challenged students. The results of the study found the overall levels of awareness and understanding of open educational resources (OER) among the focus institution's instructional faculty to be very limited; however, it was determined that interest existed in utilizing no-cost or low-cost resources, especially within the junior faculty ranks with teaching experience of 10 years or less. Another key study finding was that participating faculty considered the following areas to be the major barriers to usage of these resources: (a) an overall lack of time; (b) the lack of quality resources in their subject field or the inability to locate these resources; (c) lack of clear recognition of OER as valid instructional tools within the institution; (d) and the lack of technical support to create and modify OER materials as needed to fit instructional needs of the class. Incentives identified as useful to encourage greater use of OER included monetary awards, assistance with searching OER repositories and acquiring found materials, and increased availability of technical support tools and services designed to facilitate OER development and modification. The phase one design plan for an affordable course material program within the library intended to address these issues is presented in the study. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]