From the press release: A CampusBooks.com report shows that six out of seven top e-book retailers (including Amazon) have less than 50% of the books students need for back-to-school. But CampusBooks is the first to solve that problem, launching a free online e-textbook tool that lets students search all seven to not only find their books, but the best prices as well. CampusBooks.com has been helping students find the best prices on ...

We’ve mentioned Nature’s on-line learning project Scitable before. Now TechCrunch has a feature on a new, related project from Nature: an on-line biology textbook that costs $49 and comes with lifetime updates so it will never become obsolete to someone who purchased access. Rather than an app or e-book, Principles of Biology will be presented as a website, accessible from any Internet-enabled device. This will also make it more accessible to screen readers and other devices that special-needs readers already use for working with computers day to day. There will be some DRM on the project, but Nature feels...

Inside Higher Ed has an article about a new survey from the Student Monitor that is showing this. The survey, which polled 1,200 full-time students (average age: 20.6) at four-year institutions in March, found that the proportion of students who rented at least one textbook this spring doubled from last spring, leaping from 12 percent to 24 percent. Students who rented reported an average savings of $127. And the renting trend shows no sign of slowing: 36 percent of underclassmen said they are either likely or very likely to rent at least one textbook next semester. The most popular rental source was...

The article will appear (TBA) in Information Technology and Libraries from the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA). Author: Nancy M. Foasberg Title: Humanities Librarian Affiliation: Queens College, City University of New York From the Abstract: To learn whether e-book readers have become widely popular among college students, this study surveys students at one large, urban, four-year public college. The survey asked whether the students owned e-book readers and if so, how often they used them and for what purposes. Thus far, uptake is slow; a very small proportion of students use e-readers. These students use...

The ASUS “Campus Life” blog reports that the Eee Note EA800 is about to hit shelves in North America at a list price of under $200 (which probably means “exactly $199.99”). The device is an 8” touchscreen 4GB e-ink “digital notepad” that comes with a stylus (or, as they call it, a “2,540dpi resolution touch pen that has 256 levels of pressure”) for precise, pressure-sensitive note-taking, annotating e-books, and so on. It also includes a 2MP camera, micro USB, micro SD, 802.11 b/g WiFi, headphone jack, and speakers. Battery life is given as 13.5 hours with a 10-day standby....

From the press release: Despite their fondness for social networking and cell phones, most college students say they prefer textbooks in printed rather than e-text form. Nearly 75% of students to recently respond to a major new research survey from the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) said they prefer printed texts, citing a fondness for print's look and feel, as well as its permanence and ability to be resold. This finding was among many uncovered in BISG's inaugural survey entitled Student Attitudes Toward Content in Higher Education. The ongoing survey focuses on college student perceptions related to educational content and presentation media...

As an Art History major in college I find this very exciting. A handful of textbooks reigns supreme over art-history survey courses. To Beth Harris, who teaches the subject online for the Fashion Institute of Technology, these expensive, static tomes don’t do a great job of engaging students. They lack a sense of what it’s like to see paintings where they hang. And, Ms. Harris argues, they present a consensus view that doesn’t convey the messiness, passion, and disagreement of scholarship. Ms. Harris is trying to change all that. With a colleague, Steven Zucker of the Pratt Institute, she created...

Got the following email from Frank Lowney that I thought I should pass on to you: I thought that other Teleread subscribers might be interested in Apple’s not yet widely publicized announcement that the iTunes U service (free to higher education) now supports .epub files which nicely complements the way the iTunes.app supports .epub in RSS feeds. I’ve written two posts to my blog that you may want to draw from should you choose to write this up: Announcement: http://frank-lowney.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-support-for-epub-in-itunes-u.html More Details: http://frank-lowney.blogspot.com/2010/10/more-details-on-itunes-u-support-for.html What is iTunes U? --> http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/ For academic types, this is a major development. Of course there is...

Publishers Weekly is reporting the results of a study by the National Association of College stores. Etextbooks and ereaders are not popular, the survey discloses. 74% of students prefer print and only 13% purchased an ebook in the last three months. Of those that purchased one, 56% did so because it was required. Only 8% of students owned an ereading device and 59% of those that don't own one have no plans to purchase one. For ebook buyers, 77% read on a laptop or a netbook. As to devices, the iPhone was the ereader of choice, followed...

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a report by Jeffrey R. Young suggesting that some colleges may begin forcing a switchover to electronic textbooks in order to save students money and reduce piracy. A course-materials fee would be used to pay for the textbooks, rather than students having to go out and buy them themselves. The article suggests leveraging the savings from the absence of printing costs to make bulk purchasing more affordable. It would also eliminate the used book market (which most print publishers hate like anything) and (proponents seem to believe) reduce piracy too. ...

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, this seems to be the case at St. John's College: The faculty stopped short of banning the devices, Ms. Harty said in an e-mail to The Chronicle. But professors made sure the college now has a policy that says that faculty members are "concerned that electronic reading devices also may present a distraction," and students can be asked to keep them out of the classroom. Professors worry e-readers will draw students' attention away from classroom discussions at the college, known for a Great Books curriculum that requires students to read more than 100 texts before...

My DSL went out in a thunderstorm today, and between exhaustively troubleshooting it on the phone with an Indian-accented technician and catching up on several hundred Google Reader posts sitting in a FedEx Office (if you’re looking for a quiet place with free wifi that’s open 24 hours, I recommend it; the only drawback is there’s no refreshments), I’ve found myself without much writing time this morning. So this may be all you see from me today. Ben Hutchins, otherwise known as Gryphon from the Undocumented Features shared writing universe that I covered in one of my “Paleo E-Books”...