Issues in Scholarly Communication is a newsletter produced by Paula Kaufman, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries, for the Illinois community. Entries from 2001-2005 newsletter are available.
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Bookstores at 10 colleges across the country will begin selling access to digital textbooks this month in what promoters say is the first large-scale effort to make electronic textbooks available through campus bookstores. The 10 bookstores, which will continue to market traditional hard-copy books, are taking part in a pilot program coordinated with five academic publishers and a wholesale distributor of textbooks. If it is successful, the two- to three-week pilot program will be gradually expanded to all college bookstores, beginning in the middle of September. … A student will be able to read a book online after visiting the campus bookstore to buy an electronic card, which in turn is used to download a copy of the book from a Web site. The site is run by MBS Textbook Exchange Inc. of Columbia, Mo., the textbook distributor that is leading the project. …All 10 of the bookstores will sell electronic textbooks for 33 percent less than hard-copy versions, said Jeffrey S. Cohen, the advertising and promotions manager at MBS. A student can print a copy of the e-book, highlight passages, mark the book with notes, search for keywords, and listen to an audio version of the book. But the textbooks will have features that some students may dislike. Each book will be locked into the computer it is downloaded with, to prevent the student from copying and distributing it. The entire textbook cannot be printed at one time. After a student downloads a copy of a book, he or she will have access to it for only five months. And unlike a hard-copy textbook, the e-textbook cannot be returned or resold. Chronicle of Higher Education 8/9/05 http://tinyurl.com/9jhhk
Posted by P. Kaufman at August 9, 2005 7:09 AM
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