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Opinion

Digital books could benefit students 

Zach Lee
Opinion Columnist

Long before kids had Grand Theft Auto to teach them the joys of senseless killing and distract them from their homework -- back when Joust was on the cutting edge -- parents and teachers complained that video games were turning minds to mush and were responsible for many, if not all, of the shortcomings of American youth.

But for most people, moving pixilated figures with a joystick is inherently more fun than trudging through Great Expectations or Pride and Prejudice. So, when Nintendo gave birth to the Game Boy in 1989, and kids could play Tetris on the bus -- or even sneak it into class if they were real rebels -- educators could do nothing but become more crotchety.

Today, headmasters and mistresses are backed into a corner as video games and electronics in general have become smaller and easier to hide. And nowadays, students can sit through lectures while playing Tetris on their cell phones.

Google may be the way out.

The Internet search giant is in the midst of a campaign to digitize millions of books -- they'll use at least one million volumes from the University of Texas' collection alone -- with the hopes of revitalizing books in the same way Apple revitalized music with its iPod.

The idea is that, with electronic access to an immense library, American and European consumers will take after Japanese commuters, who have begun to read entire novels on their mobile phones, the London Times reported Sunday.

Reading takes much more effort than does listening to music, so electronic books won't be able to complete the same cultural coup that iPods were -- at least until people can read while they drive or while they go jogging. But, college students especially stand to benefit from a wider availability of e-books, which for many years seemed like a lost cause.

The ability to check out or buy immediately a digitized version of a hard-to-find text would eliminate the long waits and complications of inter-library loans for students doing specialized research. But on a much more practical level, a wide availability of electronic books would drastically change the textbook industry.

Professors would find it much more difficult to justify requiring the new edition of their own $100 book if an earlier edition were available for download at the more reasonable $12.95. After all, vendors of electronic books don't have to raise the price to compensate for expensive paper or pretty covers. 

Even if students then paid to print each page from the book, the cost to each student would be far more manageable. At five cents a page, printing a 300-page biology book costs $15, keeping the total cost to the student less than $30. Electronic publishers still profit, and the professors still get their royalties, but bookstore overhead and the material used to make the book get taken out of the equation.

Though it seems a little far-fetched to think that students would be any more inclined to read Wuthering Heights or Beowulf if they were on a screen as opposed to a printed page, digitizing entire libraries has far-reaching implications on life as a college student.

It's also worth mentioning that a cell phone full of data is a whole lot lighter than Shakespeare's complete works.

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