The Trouble with Textbooks, Part 1

People often ask me what got me started on my somewhat quixotic quest to tell the world about free textbooks. The real answer is probably that I’m slightly crazy. Rooted in some deep unanalyzed recess of my brain, next to the squeaking wheel that’s responsible for my constant ire about Boston’s underperforming public transportation system and just below the room full of angry gnomes who keep a torch burning for the lost cause of copyright reform, there is a ball of anger that I’ve decided to throw at the textbook industry. Of course, even a moderately crazy fool like me knows better than to mention a room full of angry gnomes with flaming torches during an interview with US News and World Reports or NPR. Instead, I tell the story of Giancoli’s Physics.

To start the story, I have to backtrack to 1991, when I was a junior at Billings West High School (official motto: “Failure is Not an Option”). I took two full years of physics at West High under the tutelage of John Linn, an irascible Korean war vet with a pocketful of great stories and a firm grasp of how to teach physics to fifteen-year-olds. I loved that class, even though I didn’t really get a good handle on vector addition until years later when I learned how to operate marine radar. I still have the 3.5” x 5” notecards we were allowed to make to hold the formulae we needed on tests.

Fast forward to 2003. After misspending my youth in the Caribbean, I found myself enrolled in a program studying geology at Northeastern University (official motto: “We’re # 98!”). After spending hundreds upon hundreds of dollars during my first year on textbooks that I barely used, I was beginning to wise up to the textbook racket. My degree required that I take two semesters of Physics, never mind that I’d already had two full years in high school. I took the first semester with a friend, and we both balked at the cost of the text, around $130 for Giancoli’s just-released 5th edition.

I was incensed. I’d taken this class once already, in 1991, with a well-used book that was probably printed in the mid-1980’s, and as far as I could tell nothing in introductory algebra-based physics had changed in the intervening years. Newton’s Laws still reigned. Force still equaled mass times acceleration. Gravity still pulled objects earthward at 9.8 meters per second squared. I couldn’t for the life of me understand what could justify a brand-new edition of a physics textbook when there were so many existing books that could have explained the concepts just as well.

Searching online for a more affordable alternative, I found a link to Ben Crowell’s Light and Matter series, a set of physics textbooks available entirely free online. My interest was piqued, but this wasn’t the book assigned for my class, so my friend and I ended up splitting the cost for Giancoli. I was consoled by the fact that at least the book would last me through both of my required physics classes.

Still, I was intrigued by the whole concept of free online textbooks. It seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, like an inherently practical idea to publish books online. I started digging around and found more and more free books. Then, in January of 2004, the Make Textbooks Affordable campaign unleashed their report RipOff 101, which confirmed what I had begun to find out on my own: the textbook companies were playing students like a pickpocket at Mardi Gras. I decided I had to do something, while I was still a student, to try to get professors to start using these free books. So out of frustration with Giancoli and my chance encounter with Crowell, Textbook Revolution was born.

Several years and several thousand hours of work later, Textbook Revolution is a thriving site with a couple of hundred thousand visitors a year, links to hundreds of free books, and plans to grow even larger over the coming year. I’m finishing my senior year of college. I’m midway through the final class on my list of requirements, which just happens to be Physics II. My friend lost the copy of Giancoli’s 5th edition we shared in the fall of 2003, but it doesn’t matter because since I took Physics I the field of introductory algebra-based physics has advanced enough to merit a new and improved 6th edition, only $153 at Amazon!

This time around, I didn’t even bother to go to the bookstore. Instead, I headed for the library to see if I could grab one of the two copies of the sixth edition available. I was too late to get either of them, but there on the shelf, I found copies of the second, third, and fifth editions. What I found out when I compared them will be the subject of part 2 of The Trouble with Textbooks, coming soon.

Textbook Power

Students heading back to school in the US might want to visit Textbook Power, a site devoted to textbook exchanges. The comprehensive index lists national and university swaps along with user comments and combined ratings. Thrifty students might also want to consider some of the new pdf textbook sites popping-up such as iChapters, one of the better ones.

Celebrity Textbooks

After a half-hearted, losing battle with my wife, we've changed our computer homepage from the BBC to Popsugar. I liked this graphic posted today for a mock celebrity textbook of the future, reminiscent of the funny (but legitimately informational) Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics.

Welcome Slashdotters!

All you Slashdotters coming over from Textbook Revolution & the OpenCouseWare Wayfaring Map, I hope you like the Stingy Scholar Blog! Here are some previous posts you might enjoy:

Free iPod Tour Guides
The 2005 Beggin' And Choosin' Awards
Literature Podcasts
Look Mom & Dad, You Too Can Be a Web 2.0 Computer Geek
Other Languages
Exploit Your Local Library
Stingy Studying
Bookmania
Stingy's Spain (5 Part Series)

Y'all come back now you hear. (Regular readers who don't know what I'm talking about, check it out).

What My Friends Are Doing

A great song by Jarabe de Palo to kick off the weekend.

I meet some interesting people while doing this blog. They keep doing interesting things. Thought I'd round up a few of their recent projects:

Jon Bischke and company have rolled out some great new features at Learn Out Loud. First of all, Learn Out Loud introduced a new recommendations system that examines how you've rated materials on their page in order to suggest new materials. I tried this out and was very impressed by the results. In addition to audiobooks, the Loomia-powered engine also recommends podcasts. Another great new features at Learn Out Loud is the "Free Item of the Day" sent to you by email. This is a great way to highlight the gems in their free library. They're also summarizing these resources right now on their podcast.

Remember Good Sh#$, the site that combines high quality education materials with high quality porn? Well, Fred has started a second site, Good Stuff. Unlike Good Sh#$, you can read this site at work - no porn, only great educational links. I have to admit, I didn't think Fred would be able to find enough stuff to run two sites. But he has. Good Stuff is also adorned with lots of nice art and pictures...but the sort that won't get you fired. By the way, this pic is from Dirty Pictures Cleaned-up.

Freeload Press is a new textbook publisher that offers free textbooks, complete with supplemental materials. How do they do it? Tasteful ads in the books. These guys are presenting a viable model to create affordable textbooks while paying fair wages to authors. The company is composed of honest, straightforward guys with many years of experience in publishing. I wouldn't be surprised to see some big corporate players sign-up with them soon.

You may have already seen the news on Textbook Revolution, but Jason is going to Sri Lanka to install these experimental UV water purification systems. Textbook Revolution is also helping Nuwan Karunaratne at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura to gather used textbooks for their physics department. If you can help, please email Nuwan. Textbook Revolution has been discussed in a number of recent articles including this great profile from Northeastern University. TBR was even mentioned in the Philadelphia Inquirer (thanks Joyce).

The TBR Family Welcomes Free Tech Books

The Textbook Revolution network continues to grow. The newest member of the family is Free Tech Books. Jason and I freely admit that we don't know a fraction of what's necessary to index all the computer science and programming books freely available on the web. Fortunately, Ndaru will fix that for us. Ndaru's site will be the index for all our tech books. So if you want free tech books, go to Free Tech Books. Simple. We're working to make all the books in the TBR catalog available on Free Tech Books. While plans for tighter integration are in the future, recipricol linking will help users at both sites find what they're looking for right now.

The 2005 Beggin' & Choosin' Awards

2005 has been a great year for free educational materials. Universities opened their doors and entrepreneurs saw a market. Free offerings were once the crumbs of ivory towers and publishing houses. Today, open educational materials are rapidly becoming an integral component in marketing and recruitment.

With that in mind, it's time to thank the sites that have done the most to create these materials and make them available. The Stingy Scholar is excited to present the first annual Beggin' and Choosin' Awards (or the BCA's).

Best Textbook: Motion Mountain
Christoph Schiller did a fantastic job of creating a full-length, professional-quality physics textbook and then openly offering it to the community. Motion Mountain is a genuine alternative to crumbling physics textbooks in public schools. It is a fair option for universities that require basic physics but don't want to force grumbling freshman to buy a $160 textbook. Maybe some of the authors writing free educational materials will look at Motion Mountain and say, "I can do that, too." Hey, it was featured on Boing Boing. How many textbooks can say that?


Best eBook Site: Many Books
If it was just a matter of download options - pdf, doc, text, iPod notes, PSP - Many Books wouldn't be the best. If it was just site design, Many Books would be another pretty face. If the archives were skimpy, then Many Books' users wouldn't stay. We are all grateful for sites like Project Gutenberg and The Internet Archive - both sites make sites like this one possible. But Many Books has a near-perfect union of features, interface, and content, raising the bar for free educational materials. And for that they get the gold star.


Best Audiobook Site: LearnOutLoud
LearnOutLoud has become the crossroads, not just for audiobooks, but for free learning on the web. Between their forums, blog, e-magazine, podcast, and educational podcast directory, the folks at LearnOutLoud tirelessly strive to present all of the options for obtaining a free education online. But despite the many formats, the focus is audiobooks and LearnOutLoud doesn't skimp there. LearnOutLoud's free library is not a front to bring in customers, but a genuine service created by people who believe in the value and importance of providing these materials. Here are some of the quality free audio (and video) materials available:

Audiobooks such as Common Sense, Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture, Seth Godin’s new title Knock Knock.
Lectures from Thomas Friedman, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Michael Dell, Noam Chomsky and Jeff Bezos.
Famous historical speeches from Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy and Mahatma Gandhi.

These are just some of the over 500 offerings. Like other BCA winners, LearnOutLoud has raised the bar in their category. Recently, they started to produce their own titles such as versions of Emerson’s Self-Reliance, As a Man Thinketh, poetry, and Wikipedia entries in addition to some helpful articles and tutorials. I hope to see more great things from LearnOutLoud.


Best Podcast(s): NPR
I really wanted to pick a home-brewed podcast for this category. Although I had a couple good candidates in mind, I have to give the award to NPR. The network has always provided high-quality radio programs, and they've made a recent effort to make shows available as podcast feeds. The NPR podcast index now includes thirty shows including Motley Fool and World Cafe. The podcast section of the site also indexes 200 feeds from affiliated networks, with an interface to help you find audio to other popular shows not offered as podcasts, such as Cartalk and All Things Considered.


Best Social Site: Del.icio.us
If you're new to del.icio.us, and can't understand why Yahoo! would purchase such an ugly-looking site, check out this article entitled "What's So Cool About Del.icio.us?". It's not tough to create a bookmark site and, honestly, there are many better ones. But del.icio.us is hackable (check out this library) and del.icio.us has the community. Honestly, isn't that what bookmarking sites are all about? Between tag searches, RSS tag subscriptions, and the del.icio.us popular page I've found many great, free educational sites. Although I grumbled when Yahoo purchased Flickr, I think this acquisition of Del.icio.us can be a good thing. I've enjoyed some of the minor layout tweaks and the improved search performance. So thank you, del.icio.us, for helping me find so many great sites.


Best University: MIT
This category awards the university that has made the greatest effort to open their doors to the world and to make their materials available to everyone. Although several universities have started some sort of podcast or open courseware program this year, MIT was the first and is still, indisputably, the best. To understand the size of MIT's opencourseware program, compare the number of tags hits for each program in the OCW course finder:

mit (1447)
usu (17)
johnhopkins (15)
tufts (9)
cmu(7)
foothill(1)

Size alone makes the MIT offerings impressive, but the university seals the deal through genuines content and a clean, navigable interface. Each course usually includes the syllabus, class notes, and links along with some downloadable readings, quizzes, and summaries. MIT has also made an efforts to include more lectures as audio and video.

There are other universities that should be recognized for their efforts this year. Stanford iTunes is a cool program and the university has also improved the publicly accessable highwire press free journal search. The University Channel from Princeton makes some great lectures available. Other schools, such as Berkeley are making great strides with their webcasting programs. I wish all these schools would offer more actual courses like Harvards' computer science E-1.

But MIT is still light years ahead of all these other programs. MIT seems truly committed to the concept of open education, and we hope that these other schools will continue to follow their example.

Textbook Revolution

Textbook Revolution is a fantastic web resource for free textbooks. There is so much in here - even more than first meets the eye. For example, check out these 169 e-books on programming or this library on business management techniques. Teachers definitely might want to consider browsing this archive when choosing books for their classes. While we're on this topic, also check out this excellent physics book, available in dozens of different languages.