University of Utah students want textbooks to go on line

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By Paul Biba

That’s what The Daily Utah Chronicle is reporting. Publishers are having a hard enough time right now, but textbooks publishers must be shaking in their shoes. The article, however, points out that one of the downsides to this is that the top professors might be reluctant to write for open source textbooks and give up their publishing income. Could open source mean a lower standard for the future?

The Utah Student Association is proposing to make textbooks free by offering them online.

USA, composed of all student body officers from every Utah college, has tentatively proposed to have Utah colleges and universities make more use of money-saving methods. These could range from open-source textbooks, which are electronic textbooks that volunteering scholars co-author for free, to custom publishing arrangements or an electronic or print publisher-authorized compilation of excerpts from several existing texts so textbooks are free or affordable, said Andrew Jensen, director of USA.

Thanks to ResourceShelf for the link.

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