My friend and neighbor, Jim Sollisch wrote this article last year about the cost of college text books - the cost to students and to forests: Save trees; put college textbooks on the Web [1].
Just yesterday my roommate, a student at Case Law received a book in our mailbox that he said retails for $100 - he got a mint condition copy (used) for $25. He was delighted. Soon I will be looking at a bill for my son's Fall Quarter text books. Yikes! It's always staggering.
Now this in today's PD: Ohio college students get discounts on electronic books [2]
I love a book - the spine, the cover, the pages. I have many books and enjoy reading anywhere including in the library for non-circulating works. I was disraught that my brother's beloved Oxford English Dictionary had to be disposed of due to the circumstances of his death and just yesterday my son pleaded with me to find a shelf for the old Britannica that I used throughout my Middle and High School years." You're not going to give THIS to Mac's backs, are you Mom?" But text books? If they can be online, they can be revised and republished and used time and a again by hordes of students without cutting down forests to do so. It's food for thought.
More food for thought on the electronic text vs. the book here at Tom Ball's Diary of a Filmmaker [3] Blog: Sight Reading [4].
Links:
[1] http://www.expressiveconducting.com/PDFs/Save%20trees.pdf
[2] http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/08/ohio_college_students_get_disc.html
[3] http://telos.tv/blog/
[4] http://telos.tv/blog/?p=89