Filed under: notes
A story of three professors who are producing their own textbook content and offering it free (sort of) to students fails to illustrate some of the potential problems with this particular enterprise. If you read this blog regularly, you may know that I earn a living providing content for educational publishers in math and science. That’s said in the interest of full disclosure. I do have some vested interest here (though not in college level publishing).
As a student, I actually love the idea of open source textbooks, particularly for content that is fairly static (e.g., lower levels of math). And I love the idea of not having to pay $150 for a textbook (note that the price most often reflects what the bookstore is choosing to charge and not necessarily how much the publisher is making).
However, and this is a big however, as an editor, when I hear about professors writing and distributing their own content, I shudder and wonder who exactly is doing these tasks:
- fact checking and building a bibliography so the text is correct and references correctly;
- developmental editing so the text makes sense in terms of structure;
- copy editing and proofreading so the text isn’t loaded with errors;
- sending the manuscript to reviewers and incorporating the feedback so the text is not the opinion of one sole author, but the consensus of many in the field;
- updating the manuscript as changes in the field occur;
- finding and permissioning use of photographs and illustrations so that the intellectual property of others is respected; and
- graphic designing so the text is easy to read and attractive.
And I fear that no one is doing those tasks. And that’s not really a textbook; that’s the first draft of a manuscript.
I do some of the work described in your last bullet point.
Comment by Toonhead 04.21.08 @ 1:54 pmI have no idea how well these professors are working at their textbooks and how much they do to edit/fact check/etc. But one interesting point is that it is not clear to me how well at least some textbook companies do this with their own books. I am working on a project that involves surveying large numbers of political science textbooks and many do not seem to have any interest in preventing the text from being “the opinion of one sole author.” They will write a textbook from, say, a primarily realist perspective without making that quite clear. Or make the democratic process in the United States seem like it is working amazingly, without taking much time note its short comings. Or take one paragraph to note the unfortunate death of some Native Americans without noting that the death by diseases were part of a genocide, or even noting that some people understood/stand it as such. Not that this makes it better if the professors are not adequately editing, but I’m not sure if it differentiates them that much for many (often mainstream) college textbook publishers. (Sorry that got too long.)
Comment by Elizabeth 04.21.08 @ 2:22 pmToonhead, for professors publishing their books online?
Elizabeth, oh, textbooks do have biases, but I guess I’m thinking that often one person’s approach (or craziness) is mediated by others in an author team….my dad wrote a mainstream college government text and there was a lot of back and forth with the other writers and outside reviewers, and then of course there is back and forth with the editors whereas if he had just published it himself, it would have been a really limited perspective. (Not that he’s limited, just that he sees government one way.) But yes, no one seems to admit their biases (or even know them). The other way textbooks end up with biases is from state standards that require a clear bias, but that’s not applicable at college level.
Comment by Ms. Theologian 04.21.08 @ 4:50 pmI saw http://survivingtheworkday.com/2008/04/21/professors-gone-paperless/ and wanted to mention a useful site: http://www.FreePatentsOnline.com
It provides free patent searching, free PDF downloading, allows annoting documents and sharing them, and free alerts for new documents.
If you have a spot, a link to let your users know abou the site would be great.
Comment by james 07.24.08 @ 4:20 amLeave a comment
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