Brainstorm in Progress: E-book

Showing posts with label E-book. Show all posts

Friday, April 04, 2014

Reports on the Death of the Book are Greatly Exaggerated

William Shakespeare

I was at a poetry reading at the library a while back and one of the poets had a poem about how lost in cyberspace everyone is and the implication was that he was seeing the end of print culture and the book. Never mind that there was not an empty seat in the house to hear a poetry reading on a Thursday night! But there we have it - technology is phasing out the book. But it is just changing media. We don't need hand copied books either. More and more books are being written electronically and read on electronic devices. This isn't news. What is funny is to watch people with one foot in the old paradigm trying to make sense of the new. This includes myself. I have always thought of books as something that I had to own. They are objects to be held and even if they are not held in my hand, they must be contained in something that I own! I had a funny thing happen the other day. I was downloading an ebook onto my iPad and I got an error message that said my iPad was full. I was incredulous. How could this happen? I have 16 gigabytes of space! I went through Kindle and iBook to take a look at what happened. I downloaded a lot of books. My electronic book shelves had swelled to the autodidactic, polymathic, bibliomaniacal proportions that my home bookshelves used to have. I got onto a vintage, historic cookbook jag and that cost me some room. I have the Washington DC Cookbook from the turn of the century which allowed me to send my actual hard copy to my Best Man, Steve Boutchyard, who is currently in culinary school. But I also have a copy of Beeton's and numerous others. I had the complete works of Poe; a raft of Elizabethan playwrights that are not Shakespeare as well as the complete works of the Bard; numerous volumes of Balzac; a complete library of philosophical works; everything related to Art History that is free in iTunes and Google Books that is downloadable and the list goes on. And so here I am, just like I was in the 80s, before I had a computer, with book shelf issues. I have noticed an uptick in people talking about classic literature and I think it is because so much of it is freely available in accessible formats via places like Gutenberg.org. I also have a couple of ebooks that I actually bought that I am reading with no small amount of irony: I am reading an electronic book about a physical archive where the author is able to convey in deeply poetic detail what it is like to work with the physical texts that go back hundreds of years in the Paris police archives.

English: A Picture of a eBook Español: Foto de...

I still own a lot of physical books, but not nearly as much as I used to since the dawn of the internet. I love a good physical copy of a book as much as anyone: there are some books that I have that are gorgeous old books with fine bindings, thick paper that has the wire ridges where the paper dried on a screen, and beautiful fonts that press deeply into the paper. They have a texture and presence that you can't get from an etext. That said, I was looking for a book on Ausonius on line today and I found what I was looking for on Amazon and the physical book was going for $540. And you can bet they are not being as thoughtful about design and fonts as they once were. Needless to day, the electronic version of an equivalent text from Google Books at no cost will suffice.

In the late 90s, I thought that there would be no limit to the amount of books I could put on a computer. So how I could eat up 16 gigs is just incredible; a bit is the smallest unit - a 1 or a 0, on or off, a byte is 8 bits which make a single character, 10 to 15 bytes go into a sentence, and a megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes, and a gigabyte is a 1000 megabytes. And I had 16 of those! If you are using an Apple or Android product, you probably already know about the iBook and Google Book apps, but there are other sources of free books. If you want to fill up your iPad or eReader quickly with free books I would suggest spending a rainy afternoon browsing:

Gutenberg.org
The Online Books Page from the University of Pennsylvania
The Internet Archive's Digital Books Collections
Forgotten Books
The Sacred Text Archive
World Digital Library
ManyBooks.net
Libravox - free audio books

On top of all of that, there are the numerous texbooks that are licensed with the "Creative Commons" license that you can download through various repositories like the Open Textbook Library and College Open Textbooks. There, I just exploded your iPad!

Friday, January 25, 2013

Books and The Latest Technology

Fredrick Furnivall, OED Editor
via Wikipedia

I write here a lot about technology and books, but specifically about open education resources and open textbooks, all of which tend to mean electronic texts. I love electronic texts and the internet. Through the internet, I have free access to centuries of research, articles, and books of all kinds: books now to costly to print or own, out-of-print books, rare books, books in libraries I can't travel to. I even get a chance to see images of ancient texts never before published as lexicographers and philologists put their research online. I have never been one to bemoan the so-called death of the printed word. I like being able to access nearly any text on my phone or netbook in a completely searchable format. But be that as it may, there are still three main reasons I love and use books as physical objects.

1. Linear Arrangement

I am thinking here of the Oxford English Dictionary. The one I have at home is the two volume edition. I don't know how to classify this first reason; it is the serendipity of linear organization I think. Please help me out if there is a word for this. The linear nature of information in books is a weakness in most cases and the non-linear nature of information on the internet is a strength. Before I had access to the internet, I kept a notebook next to me while I read and I would write down words that I found that I would want to explore later or ideas, concepts, and definitions that I would research in the library. Later, I would sometimes look a word up in the online version of an encyclopedia or the Oxford Dictionary which had for a time, an online version. I always came away from that experience feeling like I had only done half the job, like there were pieces of the puzzle missing. I realized that looking up a word in that dictionary is only half the fun. The best parts were getting to the word that you were looking for and what happens after you find it. Opening up the physical book, you begin to turn the pages and as you get to the appropriate section, you begin to read in a more focused way looking for the right word, and as you find it, you begin to see words before and around it that are related. They may have the same root or prefix. Those surrounding words may provide you with a deeper understanding or even a more fitting word. And afterwords, there is looking at the etymology and quotations which can lead you to even more words. Pretty soon, the entire afternoon is gone. I have not had a similar experience online.

2. The Physical Object

Books as physical objects can be works of art in themselves. The cover design, typography, illustrations, paper and cover all contribute to books as art objects. Well designed layout and typography can make reading a book easier and more pleasurable. Granted, this is purely a subjective experience. It is also what keeps books expensive. The photograph below is one that I took of my copy of Selected Epigrams from the Greek Anthology by J.W. MacKail. It was published in 1908 in two volumes on acid free paper, cloth bound, stitched binding. The paper has a thick, creamy texture and if you look carefully at the picture, you can see the type impressing in from the previous page. I bought the set for $2 because "there is not much call for this sort of thing now-a-days." I will not have a similar experience online.

3. Utility

There are just some tasks that are easier to do on my desk or at the coffee table than they are on a computer. There is this great book called The Three Text Hamlet: Parallel Texts of the First and Second Quartos and First Folio edited by Kliman and Bertram. The book opens up to about 28 inches and has the complete text of the three versions of Hamlet with a fourth column giving the transpositions from the first quarto. This would be a difficult thing to recreate on a computer. I guess one could have a large enough monitor, but it is a real treat to be able to sit on the floor with this book and argue for one interpretation over another based on the text that, at the moment anyway, supports your argument. Again, this is a fairly subjective experience, it is like being able to take in a whole map at a glance to take in the context of a place rather than just seeing a small portion of it just to find out where you are going.

There are some surprises for me in all of this - I thought I would be much more attached to art books but a couple of things have happened to art books over the years. The ink and printing have gotten so expensive that the publishers are using cheaper and cheaper materials. Some art books just stink now. Also, with Google Art Project, I can virtually walk through the door of the museum, see where the painting is hanging, and then get so close that I can see each stroke, hairs left by the brush, and threads from unfinished canvas. It does not replace seeing the paintings, but I think it is superior to some of the art textbooks that I have seen out there. SmartHistory is also a great alternative:

"Traditional textbooks are prohibitively expensive for many and do not take advantage of the digital technologies that are reshaping education. For example, textbooks often use only a single image to represent a work of art, they speak with an authoritative but impersonal voice, and they rarely incorporate the many valuable resources that universities, libraries and museums make available. We built Smarthistory to emphasize the experience of looking at art by using unscripted conversations recorded in front of the work of art whenever possible, by incorporating numerous images and video, and by curating links to high-quality resources on the web."

Google Art Project is freely available and SmartHistory is openly licensed, and free. There is no reason that these sources couldn't replace the $200 plus art history or art appreciation textbooks. This is the right tool for that job.

The current costs of books, especially textbooks, is unconscionable. Despite that, sometimes the best technology is not the latest. There is a time to break out the 3-d drawing software and a time to break out the pencil and paper.

Monday, December 31, 2012

OER: Saylor Foundation's New Bookshelf

Saylor Foundation

The Saylor Foundation is making spirits bright and starting the New Year right by ensuring that openly licensed, free textbooks remain freely available to students. You may have seen their press release. Their "Bookshelf" page is already up and the books that are due to go behind Flat World Knowledge paywall are now freely available. They are saving us the trouble of downloading them and hosting them ourselves.

"Each of the books listed below is freely available for download, online reading, and sharing, under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 license. Please share this link (and the blog post) with your networks to help spread the word!

Like many of you, we have come to rely on the free-to-read versions of the excellent texts at Flat World Knowledge. We’ve woven these books tightly into many of our free online courses, all of which rely on freely-accessible (and preferably openly-licensed) materials. When Flat World Knowledge announced recently that its previously openly-licensed books would not be available for free after January 1st, 2013, we decided to preserve the whole catalog, which we now happily share with you.

We are grateful to Flat World Knowledge for developing such an excellent catalog, and while the versions on the Flat World Knowledge website will no longer be free, the publisher continues to provide its texts at prices significantly lower than standard textbooks and with much added-value in the form of supplementary materials and interactive elements."

The Saylor Foundation certainly warrants all of our support for the coming year. I want to encourage everyone who reads this blog to seriously consider supporting this foundation. As educators, we obviously cannot rely on for-profits to keep the best interests of the students in mind.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Worldreader and biNu

Worldreader is a US and European non-profit whose mission is to make digital books available to children in the developing world, so millions of people can improve their lives. As of March 2012, they have "put over 75,000 e-books - and the life-changing, power-creating ideas contained within them – into the hands of 1,000 children in Sub Saharan Africa. Those children now read more, read better, and are improving their communities." In many African countries, 80 percent of the population owns a cell phone. Up to now, Worldreader has focused on distributing Kindles to classrooms (the organization’s founder is former Amazon exec , but by making e-books available via cell phones the organization can reach a much wider group of readers.

Worldreader's app was developed by Sydney-based startup biNu. It is currently in beta. The app uses cloud-based data compression technology to enable any Java-enabled phone (non-smartphone) to download e-books and access news websites and Facebook over an ordinary mobile signal. This is a huge step in cost reduction.

biNu is a fascinating project in itself: "With over half the world’s population owning a mobile phone today, but less than half that number having regular access to a computer, we are driven by a passion to help bring the reality of the Internet, along with its economic, educational and social benefits, to everyone." They are basically bringing the internet to regular phones.

"biNu approached this challenge by devising a patented software platform that delivers Internet applications to “low-end” mobiles with almost instant response times and efficient use of network bandwidth."

Although reaching 75,000 students in Africa is just a drop in the bucket, this project is very important because it is significantly lowering the cost of books and most importantly, access to information.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Why the Library is No Substitute for the Internet

My apologies to many of the fine librarians I know who have really kept up on the changing world of networked knowledge and the internet. The image at the left was posted by Xeni Jardin from Joe Sabia at BoingBoing. It is a sign on a shelf in his public library in Milford, Connecticut. (Click on the image to see the whole arguments.) It is a shame that the gate-keepers of knowledge are so little informed about what is happening with the internet. My responses are below.

1. Not Everything is on the Internet. Not everything is in the library either. I do not know any library that could currently afford to contain all of the books that are on the internet.
2. The Needle (your search) in the Haystack (the web). It is not very hard to find things on the internet. If you are having trouble, go to a library where the librarians believe in the web. That would be a good reason to consult a librarian. Why aren't the Milford librarians taking the time to teach then online critical thinking skills required to find academically viable materials?
3. Quality Control Doesn't Exist. The internet contains numerous repositories of vetted information (open access journals, MERLOT, etc.) Librarians have the opportunity to catalog these repositories and again, teach the critical thinking skills required to find good information. What the sign really means is that there is no one controlling the information. This has its pros and cons but why can't a librarian help me through this?
4. What You Don't Know Really Does Hurt You. Exactly my point. What these librarians don't know about the internet is hurting our children.
5. States Can Now Buy One Book and Distribute It to Every Library on the Internet. They do not understand electronic books, digital rights, or open education resources. How sad. See #4.
6. Hey, Bud, What About E-Books? Reading on a machine is different than reading a book.
7. Aren't There Paperless Universities Now? There should be but there aren't. But, university libraries are getting smaller and smaller. They are becoming service centers rather than book storage facilities.
8. But a Virtual State Library Would Work Right? Yes, in fact it will, especially with open source textbooks. This is a ridiculous statement. Using the old paradigms and business models, it would cost a thousand times that estimate. The sign, I am hoping, was put up before Google, Amazon, and the Kindle and iPad were invented.
9. The Internet: A Mile Wide, an Inch (or Less) Deep. This only partially true, it is mostly hundreds of miles wide and very shallow but it also has a couple of deep canyons of information and networks of experts in there. It contains the warp and woof of human expression. Where are the librarians and information managers to help make sense of it all? Not in Milford's library!
10. The Internet is Ubiquitous but Books Are Portable. And orange trees make terrible espresso. Hey Milford! 1997 is calling and it wants its MLS back!

Disclaimer: I have a nice little library at home but not because the internet is shallow!

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Open Textbooks:
The College Student Speaks Out

Tuesday, April 5, 2011
2:00-3:00 PM EST / 11:00AM-Noon PST

Moderator: Nicole Allen
Textbook Advocate for the Student PIRGs and Director of the Make Textbooks Affordable campaign.

In the national debate surrounding textbook affordability and adoption, the student voice often goes unheard. Join Nicole Allen, the national Textbook Advocate for the Student Public Interest Research Groups (Student PIRGs), and college students from around the nation as they discuss their initiatives to make textbooks affordable through the use of high-quality open textbooks and other cost-saving solutions. Learn what motivates students to become and stay involved, and how they impact teaching and learning along the way. Don't miss this lively discussion!

Image via Wikipedia

Info rmation and Free Registration

Saturday, March 19, 2011

OER: The Myth of Commercial Textbook Reliability

Image via WikipediaAn "OER" is an open education resource and the most common example is an open textbook. An open textbook is a book, most often electronic, that is licensed in a way that allows re-use, repurposing, editing, and republishing. One of the main advantages in an open textbook, apart from the fact that they are free, is that open textbooks can be edited by the instructor. Some "open" textbooks managed by commercial publishers may not be editable at the sentence level. One of the criticisms leveled at open textbooks is that the quality somehow suffers because they do not have the "imprimatur" of the commercial publishers. Even some advocates of open textbooks believe this myth.

According to the Educause article "7 Things You Should Know About Open Textbooks," "The traditional publishing model features robust editorial..mechanisms designed to ensure the quality...of printed textbooks." In my experience as a former manager for a commercial textbook publisher, their motivation was to bring a textbook to the market as quickly as possible, not ensure the quality. The authors go on to say "an open textbook may seem to be missing an essential credential that speaks to its validity." This is a more accurate statement because this is about perception, not reality. There is a presumption that a textbook that was not vetted by a project manager at a business conglomerate must have quality and reliability issues. Those who are arguing this do not understand the commercial textbook industry. Textbook publishers don't always get it right, and often, textbooks are bought by school districts and colleges departments without being reviewed carefully because buyers assume that commercial publishers are careful. Why else would they be so expensive? Here are a few glaring examples (of many) where they were not careful:

I will let these examples suffice for now. You can go to Google yourself and search for "textbook errors" and find many more examples. In that search, I also found articles about how to turn textbook errors into "teachable moments." How sad is that? Why would we accept these textbooks? How helpless are we that we are content with these errors? The traditional publishing cycle of commercial textbooks means that it can take two years before a corrected commercial textbook makes it back to the "customer" (that is our students). Texas has talked about fining publishers for each error - now there is a teachable moment!

How did we get here? Getting back to the Educause article which says that reliability issues in open texts "places an extra burden on the instructor to ensure an open text is complete, accurate, and appropriate for the student needs." This should be the work of all instructors and administrators no matter what the licensing looks like.

But the solution can only come from open texts: an instructor or department cannot correct a commercial text, cannot add to it, or adapt the materials to the specific needs of the local student population. That can only be done with texts that are open licensed. With an open textbook, any errors can be corrected as they are found.

Lets do our job as educators and not rely on commercial businesses to teach our students. We should be engaged in the curriculum at all stages and not hold open texts to a higher standard than commercial textbooks. Instructors and academic departments should partner to author, revise, adapt, and vet course materials. We should be partnering with other institutions to support these efforts - a textbook should include a network of subject matter experts, expert practitioners in the field, and advanced students.

Besides all of that, a textbook is not a course. It is a single tool, a reference point. A textbook is not teaching. If the answers to your questions can be found in a textbook, you are not asking the right questions.