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This blog is dedicated to the topics of Course materials, Innovation, and Technology in Education. it is intended as an information source for the college store industry, or anyone interested in how course materials are changing. Suggestions for discussion topics or news stories are welcome.

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Friday, July 31, 2009

Digital Happenings

While the blog highlights many of the digital happenings affecting our industry, there is often more going on than we have a chance to cover each week. Here are some interesting stories and links from the past few days.

  • A posting on the University of Michigan website says that the university has partnered with Amazon’s BookSurge to make thousands of books that are no longer under copyright available for on-demand printing.
  • A posting from the Bits Blog reports that Plastic Logic’s e-reader device will use AT&T’s 3G Network when it goes on sale next year. As noted in a previous posting, Barnes & Noble will be the content provider for the e-reader.
  • According to the press release, CourseSmart has partnered with seven additional publishers for a total of twelve publisher partnerships. The new publishers include: Elsevier Science and Technology, F.A. Davis, Jones & Bartlett, SAGE, Sinauer Associates, Taylor & Francis, and Wolters Kluwer Health (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.)
  • An article from Campus Technology reports that the U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of Desire2Learn by overturning Blackboard’s patent on learning management system technologies.
  • According to an article from The New York Times, Sony Reader customers can now access over one million free public domain books from Google. Previously about half a million titles were available.
  • Wired recently featured a review of the Cool-er e-reader noting “Cool-er E-Book Reader Leaves Us Feeling So Very Cold.”
  • An article from Ars Technica reports the American Chemical Society will likely be the first major academic publisher to switch to an online-only publishing model for its journals.