Ebooks at Liberal Arts Colleges

"according to a research survey conducted by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), 75% of college students say they prefer printed textbooks, citing "a fondeness for print's look and feel, as well as its permanence and ability to be resold.""

On Inkling and the challenges facing digital textbooks

" The American Public University System wants to get more bang for its buck with e-textbooks, so the for-profit college system is enlisting its professors to write and edit digital course materials. Faculty members are submitting proposals for e-textbooks to be used in about half of the institution's general education courses by the end of 2012. And university leaders hope the recently launched APUS ePress will produce many more in-house e-textbooks in the future."

"Students' use of electronic books has grown little, if at all, over the past three years, according to international surveys of more than 6,500 college students conducted in 2008 and again this year. The finding, from ebrary's Global Student E-book Survey, surprised audience members when the survey report was previewed this week at the Charleston Conference, a gathering of librarians, publishers, and e-book vendors. Even so, presenters said they felt confident that the number of e-book users would grow more rapidly over the next six months, and that libraries and colleges must be ready to handle the demand."

Library Journal on digital transition

Swarthmore embraces ebooks

Lots of cool stuff there, including Miro and 3d printing.Are ebooks going to be associated with better-endowed schools?

For the 2010 academic year, 50,000 of Ohio's 70,000 Introductory Psychology students have had a low-cost digital option available for the textbook of their instructor's choice. Developed within a University System of Ohio Project framework in collaboration with five leading publishers of psychology textbooks, the Ohio Digital Bookshelf Project emerged from three years of research and within a social network established among faculty, librarians, technologists, and the accessibility community.

"Over the next five years, digital textbook sales in the United States will surpass 18% of combined new textbook sales for the Higher Education and Career Education markets. This increase will boost revenues for digital textbooks to more than $1 billion and necessitate a general overhaul of traditional textbook production processes. The growth will also create avenues for new content publishers to enter the textbook market, lead to fundamental shifts in purchasing patterns around learning materials, and expedite the formal adoption of open educational resources to augment premium digital content"

"The Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore College Libraries have significantly expanded their collection of academic ebooks through the addition of more than 40,000 titles issued since 2006 by Cambridge University Press, the University of Chicago Press, Princeton University Press, Palgrave, and many other scholarly publishers. The books are available in Tripod, and new books will be added each week as publishers issue them."

That's a big move.

"The wait is over for readers eager to download Kindle books from their local library. Some 11,000 libraries are now offering books for Amazon's ebook platform."

Given that ebooks cannot be loaned, does the shift toward them increase the "digital divide"?

Good, deep question. A few thoughts: -device-specific ebooks certainly are a problem, esp when costs rise -Kindle books can be loaned -American racial minorities tend to make more use of phones (feature) than whites

"Open educational resources, electronic textbooks, and social media for teaching and learning at the University of Delaware and beyond."

" American College of Education announces its partnership with Barnes & Noble to make the NOOK Color(TM) available for free to new students enrolling in its cohort of classes beginning October 17 and November 28, 2011. The distance learning college is also introducing four new master's degree concentrations for educators as part of its October schedule. "