White Paper on the Utilization of Electronic Textbooks Through the Library at New York’s Colleges and Universities.
abernard102@gmail.com 2013-05-22
Summary:
Use the link to access the full text report. The abstract reads as follows: "The high cost of textbooks is negatively impacting all students. To promote affordability and accessibility administrators, faculty, librarians, instructional technologists, and college bookstore staff are increasingly considering new models that would lower costs of textbooks and other
education resources. Models range from open source texts made freely available without copyright or licensing restrictions to more traditional commercial models offered by publishers. This paper addresses the availability and potentiality of delivering electronic (digital) textbooks through the academic library.Considerations include, but are not limited to: user preferences and usage traits, copyrights and licensing, creative commons licensing with fewer or no restrictions on use, limits to user access (e.g. by time period, number of users, downloading and printing options), resale value, quality of
open access materials, ability to enhance digital texts with interactive media, academic freedom, compatible software and applications formats, compensation for value of content provided, cost and quality of printing when applicable, cost and quality of digital repositories, cost and availability of access to digital resources over varied platforms, applications, and proprietary software."