Last Friday I spoke with Nader Qaimari, the Senior VP of Marketing for Cengage Learning, about MindTap (TM).  MindTap is a program of digital products and service, including Cengage content, that engages students via interactivity.  MindTap plans to bring digital textbooks to life.  In the interview, Nader discusses how library resources fit into MindTap.  More [...]

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The Ohio Digital Bookshelf, Where will the 2nd Year Take Us?  A Webinar from the University System of Ohio TeachU, Presented by Stephen R. Acker, Research Director, The Ohio Digital Bookshelf The slides for the webinar are available on slideshare and the webinar archive. The following is a summary of my interpretation of the webinar.  [...]

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Panel discussion on eTextbooks in Higher Education:  Practical Findings to Guide the Industry.   Panelists included Jade Roth, Curtiss Barnes, Nick Francesco, David McCarthy, Jacob Robinson, and Susan Stites-Doe.  Panelist names/titles are available on the conference website. Notes are my own interpretation and my best attempts were made to ensure accuracy. Some overview data:  15% [...]

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Jeff Shelstad, Founder and CEO of FlatWorld Knowledge spoke first. Jeff provided some stats on higher education: 19.1 million students in 2010 in college $850 avg spent on textbook so, it’s about a 10billion industry Cengage, Pearson, McGraw-Hill are the big 3 publishers along with many other small ones Problem is that the industry has outworn [...]

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Received this email from Ingram today:  Ingram’s VitalSource launches Bookshelf® application for  iPad™, iPhone®, and iPod Touch®—now offers three ways to access content LA VERGNE, TN – Vital Source Technologies, Inc., the leading e-textbook solution provider for publishers, academic institutions and students today announced the availability of the VitalSource Bookshelf application for Apple’s iPad™, iPhone®, [...]

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Some really interesting articles and blog posts this week about a variety of eBook issues including:  eReader prices, lending eReaders in libraries, open source textbooks and new Cengage textbook content. 4 Reasons Why the Library Should Affect Your College Choice – US News and World Report May a library lend e-book readers? Open-sourced textbooks could [...]

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Last years law suit against 4 Universities piloting the Kindle reader as a eTextbook solution has done a lot to guarantee the accessibility of textbooks to all students. Ingram Content Group, working with the American Foundation for the Blind consulting group (AFB Consulting), announced a new disability release for their eTextbook platform – VitalSource.  The [...]

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Earlier this week I attended the O’Reilly Tools of Change (TOC) Conference for the first time.  Over 1250 attendees gathered in New York City to discuss and network   about issues and trends in publishing, in particular, digital publishing.  While much of the information presented was for the publishing industry, I did manage to find several [...]

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Interesting article in the NYT today about Barnes & Noble’s textbook rental program.  According to the article, textbooks can be rented from college bookstores for about 42% of the retail price.  B & N piloted the program last year in a few schools, it has now been expanded to 25 campuses.  Renting textbooks isn’t a [...]

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Gale and Greenwood eBook Partnership Expands Current Greenwood Titles Now on Gale Virtual Reference Library Farmington Hills, Mich., September 12, 2008 – Gale, a part of Cengage Learning, and Greenwood Publishing Group have enhanced their partnership to include more high-demand Greenwood titles, including more than 130 titles released in 2008 as eBooks on Gale Virtual [...]

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