Disruptive Library Technology Jester

Disruptive Library Technology Jester

  • About the Jester
  • Categories
  • Tags
  • Résumé / CV
  • Newsletter

Peter E. Murray

Library technologist, open source advocate, striving to think globally while acting locally

This site uses Robust Links.
  • Home
  • Tags
  • textbook
  • Thursday Threads: Learn to Code in 2012, Issues with Apple's iBooks Author, SOPA/PIPA Are Dead

    The internet has survived the great SOPA blackout, and we're still talking about the fallout. Apple made a major announcement of plans to support textbooks on iPads, but there are concerns about the implementation. But the first story this week is about a free service geared towards teaching people how …

     Posted on  January 26, 2012
     and last updated January 26, 2012
     ·  6 minutes reading time
  • Thursday Threads: Personal Book Digitizer, Status of Book Piracy, Core Elements of Description

    It wasn't too long ago that the music industry was in an uproar about stories of how easy it was to copy digital audio files and make digital copies with high fidelity. It was predicted that we would see the same thing in other media forms, and this week's DLTJ …

     Posted on  January 20, 2011
     and last updated January 20, 2011
     ·  6 minutes reading time
  • Federal Textbook Disclosure Rules Now Law

    The fact that the Higher Education Opportunity Act (Public Law 110-315) -- otherwise known as HEOA -- was signed into law last year is probably not big news to anyone. One of the parts of the bill that I have been following and commented on here in DLTJ is the textbook disclosure …

     Posted on  August 31, 2009
     and last updated August 31, 2009
     ·  3 minutes reading time
  • Textbook Affordability at the Student Success Assessment Summit

    I had the pleasure of presenting on a panel at the Ohio Student Success Assessment Summit this morning on the topic of textbooks and open educational resources. Specifically, I was talking about the plans and desires of the University System of Ohio to help faculty help students with the escalating …

     Posted on  June 23, 2009
     and last updated June 23, 2009
     ·  2 minutes reading time
  • Drive-Thru Textbook Buy-Back

    I continue to be astonished by how efficient the used textbook market has become. This week, at the end of the spring quarter at Ohio State University, a drive-thru textbook buy-back service popped up on the site of a long-closed gas station. It is a tent on a parking lot …

     Posted on  June 11, 2009
     and last updated June 12, 2009
     ·  2 minutes reading time
  • Flat World Knowledge and U.S. Gov't on Open Access Course Materials

    The sand is really starting to shift under the traditional textbook providers as the open course content movement shows signs of, well, movement. Already this year there are two events that point to shifts in how instructors and students can shortcut the complex ecosystem of textbooks as we know it …

     Posted on  June 05, 2009
     and last updated June 05, 2009
     ·  8 minutes reading time
  • Clarification Offered for "Technology: The textbook of the future" in Nature

    A recent issue of Nature published an article by Declan Butler called "Technology: The textbook of the future" included a paragraph about OhioLINK's exploration of digital textbooks:

    Ongoing tests of CourseSmart e-textbooks by the University System of Ohio show that they reduce costs -- the average US student forks out some …

     Posted on  April 07, 2009
     and last updated April 07, 2009
     ·  1 minutes reading time
  • Drupal as the Foundation of Ohio Textbook Portal

    At the end of last month, the Ohio Board of Regents announced the University System of Ohio Textbook Portal. The service has been talked about in the media, in trade publications, and in numerous blog postings. Enough time has passed now that word has gotten out, and I won't be …

     Posted on  September 12, 2008
     and last updated January 15, 2018
     ·  11 minutes reading time
  • Final Version of the Higher Education Reauthorization Act Leaves Textbook Provisions Intact

    Earlier this week U.S. Senate passed its own version of the "College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007" (H.R.4137 to amend and extend the Higher Education Act of 1965, and for other purposes) by unanimous consent (hence no recorded vote) and appointed members of a conference committee …

     Posted on  July 31, 2008
     and last updated July 31, 2008
     ·  6 minutes reading time
  • Colorado Community College System Announces Flat-price Electronic Textbooks from Pearson Education

    Colorado Community College System (CCCS) signed an agreement with Pearson Education for flat-rate access to Pearson textbook content online. News of this comes by way of a link left by Lorcan Dempsey in a comment to an earlier DLTJ entry that pointed to a blog entry by Michael Cairns talking …

     Posted on  July 11, 2008
     and last updated July 11, 2008
     ·  7 minutes reading time
  • The Complex World of the Textbook

    Who knew the college textbook marketplace could be so complex? The agents in this ecosystem and their interests are so intertwined that as a whole it poses a massive amount of inertia for those who attempt to change the marketplace. I've been involved for about a year with an effort …

     Posted on  July 08, 2008
     and last updated July 08, 2008
     ·  16 minutes reading time
  • Selling Placement in Library Search Results

    This morning's Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Campus blog has a story with the title "Should Colleges Sell Ads to Pay for New Technology?" that links to a blog posting by Martin Weller of the Open University in the U.K. As it happens, a colleague and I were talking …

     Posted on  June 04, 2008
     and last updated June 04, 2008
     ·  4 minutes reading time
  • Discussions of Textbooks Hit the Mainstream Media

    There has been an increasing focus on the cost of textbooks in the mainstream media this year, and I don't think it is the case that I'm just becoming more sensitized to it. Take for example the editorial from the Washington Post on February 7th. The second paragraph succinctly describes …

     Posted on  April 30, 2008
     and last updated April 30, 2008
     ·  3 minutes reading time
  • "Teaching with Digital Texts" presentation

    At the Ohio Digital Commons for Education conference yesterday I had the privilege of chairing a panel for a session called "Teaching with Digital Texts: Comparative Experiences from the Field". The panel was a mixture of the principle investigators and the publisher representatives from two pilot projects that ran last …

     Posted on  March 05, 2008
     and last updated March 05, 2008
     ·  2 minutes reading time
  • Textbook Disclosure Rules in U.S. House Bill

    The Chronicle of Higher Education had an article today [subscription required] about legislation pending on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives that in part includes rules for disclosure of textbook selection and pricing. The lever is the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, a major law that …

     Posted on  January 31, 2008
     and last updated February 01, 2008
     ·  13 minutes reading time
  • Seeking Details on Websites for Digital Textbooks

    This topic is a bit far from "library technology" but part of my day job at OhioLINK has been involved with research on digital textbooks. To that end, I've been looking at companies that sell a digital form of the printed-and-bound textbook. The sites that I've found are summarized below …

     Posted on  December 26, 2007
     and last updated December 26, 2007
     ·  1 minutes reading time
  • ODCE2008 Preliminary Program, Registration Now Available

    ODCE Conference LogoThe preliminary program [PDF] and conference registration for the 2008 Ohio Digital Commons for Education (ODCE) Conference is now available. As a member of the conference planning committee and a track co-chair for the Moving Ohio Forward track, I got an early look at the sessions to be presented and …

     Posted on  December 17, 2007
     and last updated December 17, 2007
     ·  1 minutes reading time
  • Textbooks On Reserve Program at Miami University

    At the Academic Library Association of Ohio meeting last week, I saw a presentation by John Burke, director of the library at Miami University – Middletown, and Krista McDonald, director of the library Miami University – Hamilton called "You Can't Do That! Library-Initiated Textbooks on Reserve Programs." It was an introduction to …

     Posted on  October 29, 2007
     and last updated October 29, 2007
     ·  8 minutes reading time