MOBIUS Libraries

Are you serious? They LOVE e-textbooks... you can pirate them instead of spending $160 on a dead tree...

Did you read the article???? It says e-textbooks are just not taking off....they seem to like the dead trees....

While getting my MLIS, I was often given the option of buying the textbook or the e-textbook. The highest priority for me was $$$$$. eTextbooks often cost more than the el cheapos in the bookstore, AND you don't even get to keep the e version. I was usually given access to the etextbook for only 4 months. To remedy this issue all together I got my books through MOBIUS! That way I didn't have to pay anything and I didn't have to store the book after the semester was over. For students to adopt e-texts, the model has to be changed. Make them pay a flat fee with their tuition. Call it a library fee or information fee. Then give them access to the required texts while they are enrolled in a course at no additional cost. Make the texts collaborative so digital notes can be taken perhaps Diigo style so they can be shared and commented on. There is a cool tool called Citelighter http://www.citelighter.com/. Citelighter is a virtual highlighter that automates the research and paper writing process. It allows the user to find and capture unique facts online, automatically generate citations, and write better quality papers in less time. They just launched a pro version in a partnership with Cengage. Citelighter Pro users are able to add to their experience with materials from Cengage Learning. If you make it affordable, accessible, and social, college students will dig it!

Yeah, this looks very promising. Interestingly enough it is through Lyrassis, the company from which I am considering purchasing online courses. Go figure! How do we promote? Are all of the members on the training listserv? Can we just forward this email out on it?

Not all, just some, but this might be the kind of thing we'd cross-post on (i.e., to the Mobius-users-l list as well as the Training-l list). Christopher is usually the one who posts to the lists about training, and he does it across several lists; you may want to check with him. As far as promoting, I don't know-- first of all, will Lyrassis let us promote their stuff? I don't see why they wouldn't, but you never can be sure with some providers. But the lists are usually where a lot of the action is. We might also want to do a blog post to the MOBIUS website, too.

Ok. I'll talk to Christopher this afternoon about promoting training.

That's amazing! It reminds me of something similar that some groups have been trying to make for blind people-- using audio, instead of visual prompts (e.g., if there's a bus stop 20 feet ahead of the person, the user would hear "Bus stop at Some Number on Such-and-Such Street." 20 feet or so from them). http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060815102854.htm