Hello macinsider members, I’m proposing an idea to help all of us to save on textbooks. Before I get started, I just want to put out a few things about ebooks and hadcopy textbooks.

Two main benefits of ebooks:

· searchability: using the ctrl F button to find / figure out a concept / definition is very fast. Whenever you’re reading lecture notes off your computer and there’s a reference to a figure / section in the textbook, it takes seconds to get there and begin reading.
· Light: Ebooks are stored on your laptop. Having more ebooks minimized the amount of books you need bring back and forth from home to school.

Two main problems with ebooks:

· Eye-strain: Most people don’t have kindles / nooks, and reading off a laptop for a long period of time may cause a lot of eye strain. A lot of people find hardcopy books much more comfortable to read and much easier to follow.
· Distractions: the internet is a big distraction when reading books on your computer.

So.. how do you know when to get a ebook or hardcopy? It entirely depends on the amount of time you will spend reading it.

Example subjects where ebooks would be a better choice than a textbook:

· Most LS / Bio courses: (For example LS 2bo3): Biology / Life sciences are expanding fields. McMaster is a very science / medical orientated university. A LOT of LS profs like talking about stuff that’s not even in textbooks yet. Your bestfriend for these types of courses is usually Wikipedia and maybe Youtube. These courses are PERFECT for ebooks. Usually, most information will be covered in the lecture slides and the lectures will have small reference to the textbooks for clarification of topics. You can easily Ctrl F the figures in the textbook, and simply read the figure caption while you read your lectures. This is VERY helpful for quick clarification on concepts. You will NOT be reading continuous chapters out of the book.. there is no point in lugging a textbook around with you.

Example of subjects where ebooks may NOT be the best choice:

· Most math / statistics courses: (for example, Math 1ao3): Math is not an expanding field. It has well defined concepts and formulas you will need to learn. You will likely use the textbook for most of your learning, and if you don’t have an e-reader using a laptop will be very uncomfortable / strenuous. The Profs may prefer rushing through concepts / examples and have you do your own reading / practice questions (After all, in math, the more practice you do the better). I would recommend using a hardcopy book for these subjects.

Example if a –iffy- subjects where both can be acceptable.

· Certain subjects can be slightly iffy when deciding an ebook / textbook (for example chemistry courses (i.e. organic chem 2ao3)). For these subjects you should ask yourself if you are naturally weak or strong in the subject. If you don’t understand chem much, can’t keep up with what’s happening, then get a hardcopy (as you may need to do a lot of reading). If you have a basic understanding and can easily visualise in 3D what the molecules are doing and how they interact as you read the lecture notes then get an ebook.

SOOOO..

Why am I going on about this?

I’m thinking about creating an ebook website JUST FOR McMaster. This site will have links to all the free ebooks I’ve used in the past; and allow people to upload links to ebooks they’ve found over the internet. (I say ‘links’ because we can’t host the ebooks on our site, we can only upload them to ex: megaupload and post a link in order to keep our site legal) and have our ‘free resources’ community grow.

The first question that may come to your mind is “why not just use google to find an ebook?”.

Sometimes, a new version of a textbook (and sometimes old ones) are simply unavailable for free. We can get around this numerous ways.

1) Make our site subscription / membership only, and have a fee of $5 / year. You can search what titles are available and if your books are there, having to pay JUST $5 for all of them would save you a lot of money. We can use the money to 1) keep the site running and 2) purchase ebooks online. After purchasing the ebook, I will convert it to a .pdf file and have it available online. (if you’ve purchased a ebook online before you may know that most of the time it doesn’t come in a .pdf file, and it expires after 1 year. After conversion to .pdf it never expires)

2) Make our website free but allow donations. The con of this idea is that our site and ebook collection will expand very very slowly.

3) Have our website free but offer the books that are “unavailable for free online” at a fraction of the price that you would normally buy an ebook for. After the cost of this book has been covered, the book will become free for subsequent customers.








So…
Now, I ask, what is your opinion on my idea?



please answer in the poll at the top



thank you

Sure...
1) lure all mac students in
2) contact company about infringement
3) ???
4) PROFIT!

That's a good point. Who will pay for the rights to post these e-books?

This is illegal, and amateurish.

I'm out.

*cue Dragon's Den soundtrack*

Just wanted to let you know you can develop eyestrain with any kind of reading. It develops when you are focusing at a specific distance for extended periods of time. So you can develop it by reading on your laptop or reading a textbook. Remember to look at far away objects for 30seconds every 30ish minutes and you can avoid this problem.

Originally Posted by justinsftw

That's a good point. Who will pay for the rights to post these e-books?

the website doesn't host the files. The files are hosted on a seperate site (i.e. megaupload). We have links to these files. Hence, we aren't hosting anything illegal. (this is how torrent sites, and the many ebook sites, etc, work)

Originally Posted by jhan523

Just wanted to let you know you can develop eyestrain with any kind of reading. It develops when you are focusing at a specific distance for extended periods of time. So you can develop it by reading on your laptop or reading a textbook. Remember to look at far away objects for 30seconds every 30ish minutes and you can avoid this problem.

I agree.
Except there are a lot of factors which may add strain when you have to read from laptops
It's just laptops = the text is far away (which may add strain), there is usually a lot of back lighting (more then necessary), the laptop is usually in a position that you normally don't read books in (unconfortable), and the laptops full of distractions (internet). Hence, why some people may prefer hardcopies when reading a lot...