Report of the March 8 e-books faculty consultation

A group of about 15 faculty and staff met in the Granberg Room on Tuesday, March 8 to discuss e-books and e-textbooks. Kelly Jacobsma, director of the Van Wylen library, apprised us of the variety of electronic book resources the library already licenses (see below). We discussed the variety of existing options for readers and file formats, talked about reading textbooks on a screen, annotation issues, and student reception of e-textbooks. We also mused about the role (and responsibility?) of faculty in promoting the use of online as opposed to print resources for ecological and stewardship reasons.

In this same vein, The March 15, 2011 New York Times has a news item As Library E-Books Live Long, Publisher Sets Expiration Date about HarperCollins unilaterally changing its library licensing terms to restrict access to its e-book catalog, because they are becoming too popular. This does not bode well.

Kelly's handout --

Library E-books

There are currently 32,000 e-books in the library catalog
We purchase e-books from a variety of vendors all of which use a different platform for reading the e-book:
• Netlibrary (our earliest collection - currently investigating new platform and portability)
• ACLS Humanities E-book Project
• Ebrary (investigating purchase on demand)
• Springer (almost 19,000 are Springer titles - portable e-book format via pdf download)
• Credo - primarily reference books
• Oxford Reference Online
• Gale Reference Books

Portable E-book formats In the consumer market

• Kindle (Amazon)
• Nook (Barnes & Noble)
• Google Books
• iBooks (Apple)
• BlueFire Reader (supports Adobe DRM standard and allows you to purchase books from a variety of online book stores, including international bookstores for foreign language materials)

E-readers and E-books Collection Guide from University of Michigan - Dearborn
http://libguides.umd.umich.edu/content.php?pid-155250&sid-1315772
Top Ten Reviews, http://ebook-reader-review.toptenreviews.com

E-Textbooks

• Inkling (textbooks for the iPad)
• CourseSmart (A substantial list of textbooks from a variety of publishers including McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Routledge, Wiley, Elsevier, Sage, Taylor & Francis, FA Davis, Jones & Bartlett, Sinauer and Wolters Kluwer etc, Partners with bookstores, Has an iPad app, E-textbooks generally cost 50% of print version.
• Nookstudy (only available on Mac and PC - not portable devices)
• CafeScribe (Follet) (features note sharing among students)
• Cengage Brain (allows purchase of individual chapters or entire textbook)