Textbooks make up a large economic and physical burden for UAF students every semester. The UAF student body is no stranger to the reality of textbook costs upwards of several hundreds of dollars every semester, not to mention 25-30 pounds of text in backpacks and book bags. However, technological advancements are making a reduction of both of these burdens increasingly plausible.

Digital textbooks, or e-textbooks, are an under-supported alternative format for receiving educational texts. The idea works the same as digital music or film distribution. The pages are put into a digital format and can be accessed on an e-book reader. These devices generally weigh in the ounces and contain more than enough memory for every textbook throughout the average college career. Alternatively, these files could be viewed on a laptop or desktop computer. This means that an initial investment of $300 at the beginning of a college career could mean reducing textbook costs by up to 50 percent, along with portability and energy benefits.

At first glance, this approach seems as if it would be full of errors and technical issues, but the potential for this system to work is amazing, as are the benefits for students, publishers and teachers.

E-textbooks are a wise economic option for all parties considered. Obviously, the costs of publishing and distributing texts are reduced significantly for the publishing companies. No printing is required, so the costs of paper, ink, printing and binding the books along with shipping the texts to schools around the nation are not present in the digital format. Digital content also reduces costs for the publisher by eliminating the overprinting and overstocking of textbooks. With all of these cost cutting benefits for the publishers, the price of a textbook for the student is reduced. According to W.W. Norton Publishing, their e-textbooks typically cost 50 percent less than print versions. Furthermore, the amount of energy and resources saved by cutting down on shipping and printing of textbooks (one of the largest printing industries in the U.S.) is staggering.

However, there are other incentives for expansion of the digital textbook format that are especially relevant for a medium-sized campus such as our own. Many larger campuses with large amounts of students are able to take advantage of printing special editions of textbooks that are custom tailored for their courses. The only issue with this process is that with smaller universities or specialized courses at a university, places that do not see large numbers of students, publishers will refuse to print such small editions of these specialized texts.

Chris Coffman, a professor of English here at UAF, sees the possibilities for custom tailored texts as one of the most exciting prospects of e-textbooks. She explained that oftentimes for more unique courses, students are required to buy several texts for the purpose of having all the selected materials for a course at hand. Hypothetically, with digital distribution of textbooks every professor at every university would have the opportunity to pick and choose from copyrighted materials from a publisher to compile necessary readings along with the option of using the prepackaged anthologies compiled by the publisher themselves.

Professors could include their own footnotes and notations for students. Also, the searching functions of e-book readers enable in-class referenced passages to be found quickly. However, Coffman has her doubts. Part of the benefit with traditional textbooks is their use beyond the material covered in a course. Many students can use this additional content to go further in depth on a subject.

With all of the possibility of this format for benefits in the educational world, why does it remain under-supported? Many publishers are afraid of piracy running rampant with the implementation of digital text. This was a similar dilemma for film and music industries several years back, and many fought hard against digitalization of their respective formats. However, it is only now, as industries are beginning to support and control digital media, that piracy has reduced. Currently, most major publishers are lightly supporting e-textbooks.

One of the most popular programs to distribute e-textbooks is Coursesmart.

The company works with Bedford, McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin, Pearson, Wiley and Cengage publishing to bring e-textbooks to students. Although this is a step towards implementing digital texts at campuses around the U.S., there is still a lot of ground to be covered. However, the technology is one to keep an eye out for around campus, and may very well become the norm over the next few years.