http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/business/media/22textbook.html?ref=books

I think this article is interesting and relevant based on recent blog posts about digitalized versions of books.

I completely agree with every crack that was and every will be made about Amazon’s Kindle. There’s a certain magic about musty old books (as well as fresh, brand new ones) that could never be replaced by an LCD monitor. In fact, I haven’t met a single person who disagrees. The Kindle is merely a Christmas-fever invention, something that was made-up just in time to be one more flashy gift that’s going to sit in a desk, unused for years, because anyone that needs an electronic device to read a book probably isn’t going to be reading many books.

But what about textbooks? I have to say that there would definitely be appeal to knowing that you’re reading text that is exactly what your professor wants you to see, which is what drove me to read this article in the first place. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the only advantage I can come up with regarding DynamicBooks. I feel like all the same rules apply – I want to high-lite, fold pages over to mark the poems I need to share with my roommate later, and underline quotes to use in test essays. To some degree, I even like it when professors don’t share the same sentiment expressed in the text, because then I feel like I have a more expansive idea of what it’s all about. I’m exposed to how my professor wants me to understand it and how the author feels it’s best to learn it.

Cost is another important factor. Naturally, if I’m at the Co-op and I see a regular textbook priced at $134.29 and an electronic version right next to it going for $48.76, I’m going to hesitate. Fortunately, I’ve already seen someone make this mistake and it has saved me from picking up the disk, despite its lower, attractive price tag. A friend of mine bought the digital version of one of her textbooks because a Co-op employee worked very hard to make her think she’d be dumb to spend more money, but then took it home to find that the formatting was all wrong for her computer, the font was much too small, and -surprise!- she couldn’t take notes down for herself in it. The cherry on top was that the CD was final sale. She ended up buying the textbook (the real thing) anyway.

I guess the biggest reason I would never buy an online textbook is that I know what reading online is like. I’ve had countless excerpts posted on HuskyCT that I opened up and tried to diligently read, scrolling down through the pages as my eyesight failed me. Even printing them out onto paper makes me feel like I’m being cheated. I paid for this course and all I get is a couple pages of Arabian Nights? I want the book in its entirety so that I can feel like I have access to the whole story. I want it in my hands so that when I need to look something up later all I have to do is open it up to the marked page. If it’s a novel, I want to re-visit it in the summertime when I can read it properly, take it outside with me and fall asleep with folded pages underneath my cheek in the sunshine.

I understand the convenience. I’m not, however, looking for my class books to be only as reliable as Wikipedia, no matter how cheap they are.