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DIGITAL TEXTS
What's new and what's coming -- "First It Was Song Downloads. Now It's Organic Chemistry." New York Times 27 July 2008 about ThePirateBay.org.
News stories and videos -- High Price of Textbooks || Pirated Electronic Textbooks || IHaveThatBook.com
GAO report in 2005 criticized textbook publishers for too frequent revisions, and bundling books with extras (e.g., CDs).
New report from California State Auditor: Affordability of College Textbooks (August 2008).
Reauthorized Higher Education Act (signed into law 8/14/08) has provision that requires that publishers, in their marketing materials, provide professors with textbook prices.
On demand publishing -- Blurb.com || Lulu.com || BookSurge.com
Custom textbooks, e.g., Bedford/St.Martin's Custom Publishing || Pearson || Elsevier is offering "bundles" of books with an electronic component (Cabrillo's Rad Tech and Nursing programs are using)
Online access for the student body At for-profit University of Phoenix, students pay per-course fee of $75 for full electronic access to the textbook assigned for their course and to a larger library of electronic materials called Resource. [330,000 students at U. of Phoenix]
Electronic books -- free through a library
eBooks at Cabrillo
- From the Cabrillo College Library homepage http://libwww.cabrillo.edu
- Click on Full Text Articles
- Select NetLibrary E-Books
eBooks at Santa Cruz Public Library
- Go to Santa Cruz Public homepage at http://www.santacruzpl.org/
- Under Find Library Books/Media, click on Downloadable Audio and eBooks
Electronic books -- maybe (or maybe not) the whole thing!
Google books http://books.google.com
Electronic books -- not free
- At Amazon, you can download electronic books to a Kindle. (We'll have a couple of Kindles to demonstrate) Using a Kindle new to you? Well: books were once a new system!
Subscription services
Rentals -- new ideas
Open source textbook movement
Free textbook downloads -- primarily in math and sciences
Other free online books out on the Web. One of the largest sites to search is ARCHIVE at http://www.archive.org. Archive's Text Archive.
BookMooch "Give books away. Get books you want." 8/1/08 Halliday's Fundamentals of Physics is available (required book for Physics 4A) You gain points by adding books you want to give away! Once you have enough points, you can mooch. Farewell to Manzanar (HIST 15) is available (8/1/08).
Custom Search Engine to search 14 Web resources for full text resources
Sample real textbooks used at Cabrillo
Example 1 -- regular textbooks
Math 12 Instructor is Joseph Krause. Required textbook is Introductory Statistics by Mann (Information from Cabrillo College Bookstore Web site)
ISBN 9780471755302 [6th ed., 2006] $146.75 new; $110.25 used
You can often find a cheaper copy on the Web, but there can be problems: are you getting the right edition? what are the shipping costs? when will the book arrive?
- Bublos.com Best price; extensive comparisons || fetchbook.info price comparisons
- Craigslist $80 for used 6th ed.
- eBay $24.99 for new 5th ed., 2003 (both 5th and 6th eds. are on Reserve in Library so maybe 5th ed. is ok?)
Probably worth it to explore the publisher's Web site! You can actually use the Student Companion Site for Introductory Statistics at the Wiley Web site without a password. Some Wiley books are available for download at about 40% off printed price.
Example 2 -- regular books
English 1B Instructor is L. Scott-Curtis. A required book is Frankenstein by Shelley. It is available full text free on the Web here and here
English 1B Instructor is V. Coe. Great Expectations by Dickens is required and is available here and here. Pride & Prejudice by Austen is required; it's available here and here.
Worldcat.org for finding books in nearby libraries. Just borrow it!!
last rev. 8/09 but page is not being kept up to date |