FAIRFIELD – In late 2019, five anthropologists were put on a team by the Academic Senate of California Community Colleges (ASCCC) for the purpose of writing a text book. In February 2020, the work was divided up and was expected to begin but COVID struck the following month before anyone was able to begin their writing.
Two of the contributors immediately dropped out, one more stayed on for a bit longer before realizing that she was unable to stay on the project. In the end there were two people left on the project Lauren Taylor-Hill who was to be the writer and Arnie Schoenberg who was to be the formatter. Over the summer of 2020 and the winter break of 2020/2021 the first seven chapters were written by Taylor-Hill alone.
When the unfinished product was brought to the ASCCC it was met with denial. Despite this Taylor-Hill decided that she wasn’t done with this project, stating “I thought the project was worthwhile. And so I can do it on my own… None of the content came from anybody else. Arnie had not had a chance to format anything. And so I continued on.”
In Fall of 2023 after taking a sabbatical Taylor-Hill was able to complete the textbook and then move on to publishing and copyright steps.
Finally, the book was published in July of 2025 and was used in the following school semester. Currently, the textbook is completely free to access and use for Anthropology Lab classes.
“People can use this, but they may not make money off of it… The only thing I ever ask for is that it has my name on it.” states Taylor-Hill
Professor Taylor-Hill spoke on her overall motivations by writing a book stating “Students would have financial aid, but it wouldn’t be dispersed until a certain time. And so there’d be a delay in getting the textbook, even if there was a book on reserve, which I always made sure there was.”
Taking issue with the preexisting system, she decided to take action.
“It became clear to me that the publishing companies were not in it for educational purposes.”
In the end Taylor-Hill has left us with a publicly available and easily accessible textbook with no paywall in front of it and a channel for more students to learn.
