Nature Publishes a "Post-Gutenberg" Electronic Text

lpress writes "Most of today's electronic textbooks are re-purposed versions of print books. Nature has published an e-text that departs from the traditional book format and business model. Their Introduction to Biology e-text was created from the ground up and consists of 196 modules rather than a sequential book and the student gets a lifetime subscription for $49. Nature will continuously update the e-text as the science and pedagogy evolve."

Evolution can be a good thing

[erick99]

So far eBooks have not varied much from the formatting of printing books. I like the idea of taking advantage of the technology available for eBooks and perhaps making books more interesting or with more content, etc. I teach psychology at two colleges and I have noticed that some of the publishers of text books are beginning to do this (Pearson and McGrawhill are two).

Re:Evolution can be a good thing

[Intropy]

I agree with the idea. It seems a really simple start would be making them like offline websites. It's not a perfect translation, but doing richer data flow and formatting than static books is a problem web development has been working on for some time now and has a toolkit around.

Business

[kodiaktau]

This is a business model that is evolving away from the traditional print media. As soon as authors, publishers and printers/conversion vendors get it through their heads that content needs to be modular and easily accessible they more likely they are to win in this media format. Teachers/Profs want to be able to add/subtract at will and let students access the content. Students just want what they need, at a reasonable price. Institutions are being pressured to be green and keep costs low on these formats. It is nice in this model that the content isn't rented and is owned - the bad news is that the medium will likely change and the owner won't be able to migrate to the next big thing platform - that is the thing we should be thinking about now to make sure we don't get stuck locked to a specific technology. The answer is that electronic text MUST evolve in this fashion.

Everything old is new again...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Honestly, while this might be innovative if you consider it from the perspective of 'ebooks', it sounds a hell of a lot more like early-90's AOL, with its subscriber-interaction features and assortment of proprietary content licenses available to customers, albeit delivered as a paywalled site on top of the WWW, rather than by dial-in alongside it...

There also seems to be a fair bit of 'the large print giveth, the small print and structure taketh away' going on. On the plus side, hurray, a publisher not trying to enforce some 180-day DRM timeout scheme using a horrid proprietary format and ghastly custom reader program! Wait... $49 gets me a 'lifetime' subscription; but the 'textbook' is arranged around a 'class', with a professor and other students, which is presumably going to last a relatively short period of time. Does 'lifetime' mean that I am allowed to log in and pick through the cobwebs for as long as I can remember my password? Does it break when the 'class' dissolves?

Really, this seems sufficiently unlike a textbook, and sufficiently similar to certain other offerings, that treating it by comparison to ebooks seems actively misleading... If you were forced to describe the service as "Like an ebook; but..." that ellipsis would be rather long. If, on the other hand, you said "Nature is charging $50 per person, per class, for their hosted competitor to Blackboard or Moodle; and is sweetening the deal by throwing in a whole bunch of premade content modules." you'd basically be done...

This isn't, necessarily, a bad thing; but it isn't a book.

Re:Evolution can be a good thing

[dotancohen]

I agree with the idea. It seems a really simple start would be making them like offline websites. It's not a perfect translation, but doing richer data flow and formatting than static books is a problem web development has been working on for some time now and has a toolkit around.

The problem is that these books _wont_ be offline websites. They can be updated, that means that facts can be redacted. This is DRM with a pretty face. In fact, it is even worse than current DRM: the proponents are marketing the ability to change the facts as a feature.

Diffs

[Compaqt]

What would be really useful is to give diffs for each new version, i.e., "What's New".

Nothing more annoying than to have to read through 1000 page to find out what's changed, assuming you remember the previous version exactly enough to be able to discern.

Re:Evolution can be a good thing

[tehcyder]

The problem is that these books _wont_ be offline websites. They can be updated, that means that facts can be redacted. This is DRM with a pretty face. In fact, it is even worse than current DRM: the proponents are marketing the ability to change the facts as a feature.

Then don't buy the fucking book if you're that paranoid, stick to expensive paper books and Wikipedia, because obviously that never changes.

Re:Evolution can be a good thing

[Captain Hook]

It doesn't have to be expensive paper books, ebooks can work. The complaint is about the reference material changing, especially if that change doesn't come with a change log.

Think of it from a different point of view. You submit a dissertation in which you reference one of these new texts and supports your claim that the sky is blue. Between the time you submit the paper and the paper being reviewed the text you have referenced is changed to say the sky is actually slightly violet rather than blue.

The idea is good, but you have to still be able to reference a piece of text/chart/graph/video as it was at a particular point in time or the entire referencing system used globally breaks down.

Re:Evolution can be a good thing

[DrXym]

Perhaps the answer is a slider, a bit like the one in Google Earth. When you load a page there is a slider at the top pushed all the way to the right. Slide it left and you see previous revisions of the text with date & time information, and perhaps context against the change too.

Re:Evolution can be a good thing

[camperdave]

The problem with dynamic text books is that if you make it easy to correct technical errors, typos, and spelling mistakes, you also make it easy to correct political or ideological "errors" and historical "mistakes".

Re:Evolution can be a good thing

[dave420]

So cite the book *and* its issue, just as is done now. What's the big issue?