E-Books and Contributed by Organizations or Campuses

A Companion to Digital Literary Studies is a narrative of what may be called the scene of "new media encounter" — in this case, between the literary and the digital. The premise is that the boundary between codex-based literature and digital information has now been so breached by shared technological, communicational, and computational protocols that we might best think in terms of an encounter rather than a border.

Ithaka's 2006 survey of faculty members sought to determine their attitudes related to online resources, electronic archiving, teaching and learning and related subjects.  This study affords the opportunity to develop trend analysis of many measurements collected in the 2003 and 2000 faculty surveys. As in the past, Ithaka developed a robust set of disciplinary and other demographic analyses that have allowed them to learn more about how best to serve the needs of different types of faculty members. Findings include;

• Attitudes towards the possibility of a transition away from print format, both for scholarly journals and monographs
• Perceptions of libraries and their value, including specific library functions, and how these perceptions are changing
• Preferences in research practices, including disciplinary differences and changes over time
• Attitudes towards archiving of both print and electronic resources
• Preferences that lead authors to choose among scholarly journals in which to publish their articles, as well as attitudes towards digital repositories

Predicting when e-textbooks will become a viable alternative to the dead-tree variety churned from printing presses to millions of college students a year is a bit like asking whether newspapers will give way to the Internet. Everyone thinks they will, but it’s a question of when, and what the new paradigm will look like.

Would-be reformers are trying to beat the high cost -- and, they say, the dumbing down -- of college materials by writing or promoting open-source, no-cost online texts.

The issues addressed in this article are not about the E-Book market outcome, but the factors influencing the process of E-Book adoption.

For years, some have predicted a shift — and then not seen it take place. But changes in technology, ventures by publishers and worries over textbook prices might make this the time.