By Elliot Mann

Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN 

When buying her "Financial Accounting Principles" book this fall, Winona State University sophomore Liz Printon compared the $140 price tag to that of the electronic version, which cost a few bucks short of an even hundred.

She didn't need advanced financial concepts to guide her through the purchase.

Printon, along with many of her peers across the nation, are looking toward e-books in finding ways to lessen the load of buying textbooks. Meanwhile, professors are finding that in some cases, the e-books take advantage of a younger society that constantly stays plugged in.

Virtual library

The University of Minnesota-Rochester, which launched undergraduate classes this fall, has a "virtual library," where students are plugged into the University of Minnesota system, which includes 250,000 electronic books. Students can also order the hardcopy versions, which would take about a day for delivery.

The library at Winona State University now spends about 75 percent of its $920,000 budget on electronic media, from books to databases.

But other studies show that even as electronic texts become more popular, students still favor bound books.

Printon has grown to favor reading on her PC.

Winona State junior Ray Sun also likes .pdf files over books, mainly because it's easier to use the computer's search function to find particular passages.

Textbook fans

But not everyone is lining up to toss their paperbacks in the garbage.

"I don't always have access to the Internet, so I don't always have access to the book," said Amy Breyer, a sophomore at Winona State.

College students have long grumbled about the cost of textbooks, which one federal study said cost an average student $900 per year. While e-books defray the upfront cost, they all but remove the back-end savings that can sometimes come through book buybacks. Some e-book subscriptions expire, which essentially means the students are paying to rent the book.

University of Minnesota-Rochester library Mary Beth Sancomb-Moran said she favors print books herself, but realizes that electronic versions give people more access.

"If you're out in the middle of nowhere, and we have many places that are the middle of the nowhere, this is really a wonderful opportunity to have access to material you wouldn't otherwise have access to," she said.

There are 1 comments - Display All Comments

Socratic_
Method_Ma
Rochester, MN

Posted on 10/28/2009 at 3:50:33 AM

This just in: Pretty much everything is available for free online.

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