Bookstore Erects Unsuccesful E-text Program

E-texts are touted as the latest approach to harnessing new educational technology and saving students money on books, but they are expensive and access is too restricted, according to a report released by the Student Public Interest Research Groups.

Fullerton College's bookstore sells e-texts through their Web site, with little success. Only 17 have been sold this semester, according to information from Nick Karvia, director of the bookstore.

Students download the text from the bookstore's Web site and read it on their own computers. They can print portions of the e-text if needed, with a limit to the amount printed. The e-texts cost less than the print versions of books, new or used. However, access expires after 180 days and e-texts cannot be sold back.

E-texts are also available online for wireless electronic readers like Amazon's Kindle and Sony's PRS-505, small devices that will store and display digitally formatted books downloaded from the Web.

Once downloaded, the books are stored on a reader. The devices are expensive and their small screens and lack of color displays make it difficult to read texts with graphics.

There are also fewer texts that are available for the readers, making them more expensive and even though they do not expire, reselling them can be difficult. Amazon and Sony both say the user is buying a license to use the book, not the book itself, and the license cannot be resold.

However, open source texts offer an interesting alternative to e-texts, with some tempting advantages.

While e-texts are developed and sold by traditional textbook publishers interested in maintaining their profit, open source materials are a volunteer effort, offered free. Open source projects began at universities like Global Text Project at the University of Georgia and Connexions at Rice University.

Academics write materials or donate work they've already written.

One new offering by Connexions is "Collaborative Statistics," a text that has been used by California community colleges for more than 10 years.