This might be appropriate for basic textbooks with short lifespans, the ones published in thousands of copies for foundation courses, that are not interesting in themselves, and not worth keeping. But there are many books assigned for humanities classes that are not 'textbooks' in this sense. They may be published in small editions, by publishers who do not have a strong economic incentive to provide e-editions. I hope my state does not suddenly make it impossible for me to assign the Venerable Bede or a facsimile of the Bayeux Tapestry to my students, because these are not available in e-versions.

I also worry that this will discourage publishers from publishing paper versions of even the most permanently useful textbooks. Will all books that are used in college classes become ephemeral things that you can only rent, not permanent objects that can be put on a shelf and contemplated over a lifetime? Many of my most treasured books are textbooks from courses I took in college; I even have one, Chrestomathie de l'ancien Francais, that my father had as a textbook in the 1930s--and very useful it is, too.
A-M Bouché

Part of me thinks - Awesome, lighter backpack...Seriously, if I could carry a Kindle, Nook or someother e-reader instead of 30 pounds of books across campus I would love it. Much like my netbook vs my laptop vs the hubby's desk top.

However, unless the 'e' versions develop or improve high-lighting/note taking options (I'm a margin writer) and improved graphics that allow better or any visuals this maybe all for not - and while easy to transport, useless for study.

I wonder when they're going to make this happen for highschool or even elementary texts, since I only have one class per day, in highschool I had 7 and gigantic texts for each that had to be carried home everyday.

Does anyone know of studies comparing comprehension between the various media? It may just be me, but while I "read" from a screen all day long (literally) my comprehension is better with paper print media.

This may be because paper media are what I'm used to, but I'm interested in the difference.

The only problem I have with this is (according to the article)students are being forced to rent a book - not own. If you buy a paper textbook. I can use it as long as the school teaches from that edition. I can resell it and recoup some of you money - or more importantly buy a used book and save money that way. I can't see ebooks costing over $20-$30 apiece if all a student is doing is renting the book for a specific time period. Addition technology (websites, other resources) I can se an addition fee for - but don't add this to the cost of the book.

The money you invest in college pays more dividends than any other investment, provided only that you have a triple-digit IQ, and that you give a damn.

Has California solved the standards questions so that all these e-books will be accessible across the many competing readers, from Kindle to Sony, to my ipod, to... ? Last I heard this was still an issue...

The textbook I have used for my grad class at Cal (in updated editions over 10 years) was available last Fall in three forms: hardcopy purchase, hardcopy rental, and electronic pdf (downloadable in 10-page chunks). I tried to rely only on the digital format while setting up my syllabus, and found problems. The text is around 1000 pages long and the on-line format was not geared to flipping through multiple pages; as a result, I felt there were gaps in my syllabus when I developed a schedule of reading for the latest updated edition. The web site did not offer a much-needed multi-page overview.

More interesting to me, the students nearly all went for the conventional choice. I had two population groups; one I felt needed the text only for the length of the class, while the other would benefit by having it available for longer. I made the textbook choices clear in a pre-class e-mail and again in the first week of class. All students but one chose purchase. I would not call any of them Luddite; they were very comfortable using digital tools in other ways for the class.

One student attempted to use the electronic format, but after 3 or 4 weeks, went to print. She seemed to be having the same problems I did when I reverted to print.

Clearly, web site redesign can help some of this. However, my guess is that a heavily-illustrated, lengthy text may in fact be best in print - and my students, too, seemed to instinctively make that choice.

An important issue that any college or university, let alone an entire state system, must consider is the accessibility of these e-books for students with print disabilities. If the books are not in a format that can be read by an adaptive computer program, these students will have a barrier put before them that violates not only federal (and in some cases, state) laws, but sets us back in terms of the accessibility of postsecondary education to the masses. In addition, recent court rulings (in the last few days) have pretty much sided with students who filed lawsuits against schools that were requiring the Kindle or other electronic readers, which are not formatted to be accessible at this time.

There are literature citations to a Forrester Research study showing comprehension on-screen is 30% less than with print.
We have several schools in my state that brag how they save several hundred thousand dollars a year because they are "paperless" but the students I have spoken to indicate, for reasons cited by others above, they print off the big chunks of reading at home (it merely shifted the costs). 30% lower comprehension would mean that students will need to go to high school an extra year if they really read everything from screens.

I am surprised that California, a state that you would expect would go the "green route" would select such a non-green alternative. Compared to paper, electronics is very wasteful and polluting. "eReaders" will soon converge with other e-technologies including new cell phones, making the current "new" formats tomorrow's "8-track." According to a Climate Group report, the new electronics and ancillary equipment for online operations, are emitting 830 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, about 2% of the manmade carbon footprint and equivalent to all the world's aviation-generated CO2. It makes sense: a person reading a book on an e-reader is constantly drawing electrical power while a paper book uses no electrical energy to read.

When it comes to the environmental and pollution costs, electronics loses on both counts. About one-fourth of the energy consumed by electronic devices is in their manufacture; about three-fourths is spent in their ongoing use. And their lifespan is fleeting. Printed books are far cheaper to produce, consume no energy in use, and can last for centuries. Printed books are often given or sold as used books (used 4-5 years in schools), serving many readers before they are ultimately recycled as paper, and the recycle rate for paper is approaching 60 percent, the classic renewable resource.

Very little of the metal-and-plastic electronics is recyclable, and lifespan is currently less than 5-6 years. "Old" electronics contain some of the world's most problematic toxic wastes including cadmium. And the Climate Group report estimates that electronic-related emissions will increase about six percent each year through 2020 as more people buy the devices.

Using e-books as an "economical" replacement for paper books is a myth. The "refreshing" of obsolete school electronics barely 4-6 years old is already the biggest expense in schools outside of salaries.

Paper books on our shelves represent sequestered carbon helping to offset the bigger electronic carbon footprint.

John Richard Schrock

I just want to draw further clarification on this law as the article states and the law clearly states. The California law does not mandate institutions use digital textbooks by 2010. All it does is require "extent practicable" those who sell textbooks to colleges in the state that they be available in the same format a print. This is effectivily feel good legislation. It does promote a direction publishing and booksellers are already moving in, but its not a mandate.

I wonder if these policy makers consulted with librarians who focus on reader preferences and who are familiar with issues involving documented lower retention for ebooks as opposed to paper books (which better support deep, immersive reading), accessibility issues, low levels of student acceptance, lack of design standardization, etc., before rushing to put this into law. Penn State English Department faculty reported on lower levels of deep, immersive reading and recall for students reading fiction ebooks vs. paper books at the Educause annual meeting in November. Perhaps most of these issues will be resolved by 2020, partially due to this legislation which may force publishers to adopt a new business model and the producers of ebook readers to work harder on overcoming existing shortcomings. I do think that the proliferation of ebooks is inevitable but hope that they do not represent a completely displacive technology with regard to paper books.

> Venerable Bede Not Available ...

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/bede-book1.html

Books like this can always be scanned and created by teachers for their specific needs. Teachers need to understand that they are no longer tied to publishers for materials that are out-of-copy right, or not-in-copyright.

> Using e-books as an "economical" replacement for
> paper books is a myth.

Do the math. e-Books are still in their infancy, but will be much lower in price that PCs, which can run $2K-$4K per copy, depending on how much schools spend in maintenance. These numbers will be coming down too, one of these days.

As head of interlibrary loan services at my community college in New York City, I think this should be the way of ALL interlibrary requests for articles and book chapters in the much nearer future. We should *not* have to wait five years to go paperless. This will help save many many trees, ink, non-degradable plastic, file space, not to mention my patrons' and my time.

Digital texts and next adjuncts remotely teaching from Bangalore.

I don't understand why the legislator thinks the price for e-books will remain lower than the textbooks over the long term. Publishers charge the very limit of what the market will bear, and when the "market" is forced by their course requirements, it can bear quite a lot. Just because e-book editions are cheaper now than print doesn't mean that will continue unless the legislators also mandate the price difference (oh, but that's Socialist!). Probably the prices are lower now because the publishers are enticing the market to build. If she's thinking that the print costs more to physically produce and that therefore the e-books will always be cheaper, that's an incredibly ignorant view of how micro-economics works in a market that is near-monopolistic in its characteristics (books are monopolies due to copyright law, and within a class, course requirements create temporary monopolies for the chosen text).