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Ebook standards may lack the glamour that the technology attracts, but the arrival of ePub3 has the potential to transform how the academy creates and delivers its content to students and researchers. Just weeks into the New Year and already there is a new ebooks revelation that colleges and universities need to digest. January saw the launch of Apple's new iBooks2 software which grabbed headlines (see the BBC article here) and sparked heated debate across the academic community. Quietly underpinning the technology of the iBooks software is ePub.  ePub is the 'defacto' ebook standard, with the latest version of ePub3 supporting complex layouts and rich media and interactivity for eTextbooks and professional and scientific publications.

"Readium, a project of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) and supporters, is an open source reference system and rendering engine for EPUB publications. EPUB is the industry-standard open format for eBooks and digital publications. The latest version, EPUB 3, is based on Web Standard technologies such as HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, SVG, and the DOM. The overall aim of the Readium project is to ensure that open source software for handling EPUB 3 publications is readily available, to accelerate adoption of EPUB 3 as the universal, accessible, global digital publishing format. Readium is built on WebKit , the embeddable open source Web content engine."

"Booktype is a free, open source platform that produces beautiful, engaging books formatted for print, Amazon, iBooks and almost any ereader within minutes. Create books on your own or with others via an easy-to-use web interface. Build a community around your content with social tools and use the reach of mobile, tablet and ebook technology to engage new audiences. "

"Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies is a collection of chapters and case studies contributed by college and university presidents, provosts, faculty, and other stakeholders. Institutions are finding new ways of achieving higher education's mission without being crippled by constraints or overpowered by greater expectations. "

"students also share their textbooks because they are so incredibly expensive. And as the digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on e-books makes lending someone your copy difficult if not impossible, students are likely steering away from e-books because they simply don't work for them - practically or economically."