There has been a lot of speculation that the world of publishing is on the verge of a major upheaval similar to the one going on in the music industry. At present the digitisation of novels, and ebook readers haven’t had quite the same impact as mp3 players. Certainly book piracy does occur, but most people still prefer a book in their hand.
It may be that text books will be the exception to the rule. There are a number of international groups developing free digital text books. In addition, there are a number of authors shifting to the Creative Commons licence which allows free distribution of their texts (most commonly, their ‘out of print’ texts).
Ck-12
“CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the U.S. and worldwide. Using an open-content, web-based collaborative model termed the “FlexBook,” CK-12 intends to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality educational content that will serve both as core text as well as provide an adaptive environment for learning.”
http://www.ck12.org/aboutus.html
Open Text Book
“Open Text Book is a registry of textbooks (and related materials) which are open — that is free for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute.”
Global Text Project
“The Global Text Project, with plans to create a free library of 1,000 electronic texts for students in developing world. The library will cover the range of topics typically encountered in a university’s undergraduate programs. The global academic community and global corporations will be engaged in creating and sponsoring this library.”
http://globaltext.terry.uga.edu/home
WikiEducator
“The WikiEducator is an evolving community intended for the collaborative:
- planning of education projects linked with the development of free content;
- development of free content on Wikieducator for e-learning;
- work on building open education resources (OERs) on how to create OERs.
- networking on funding proposals developed as free content”
http://wikieducator.org/Main_Page
Given that these are “not for profit” organisations and are generally targeting students in the developing world, perhaps, if we use a text, we could encourage students to make a donation. As part of our social outreach, the university could also provide some funding and/or support staff who wish to contribute their expertise. Perhaps part of our global marketing could be the distribution of free, world class, Monash branded etexts.
At present the number of texts is still a bit limited but this is changing rapidly. In the near future academics may need to consider whether to continue with a commercial texts or shift to a comparable free digital text. We are already seeing commercial publishers offer additional services beyond the basic text – it will be interesting to see how their business models evolve if academics begin to adopt free digital texts.