Only recently have novels and newspapers become associated with megabytes and battery life — and with such rapid advancements in the e-reader industry, it is only a matter of time before Nooks replace books.
But while technology catches up, Penn students can still find cheaper alternatives for their textbook needs on campus.
Barnes and Noble’s Nook eBook Reader made its public debut Oct. 20 last year, but it is sold out until February nationwide. The Nook is one of several available e-readers, including Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader, that have gained recent popularity.
Although the Nook does not offer textbooks yet, Barnes and Noble — which owns and operates the Penn Bookstore — offers a new rental program that allows students to rent books from college e-commerce sites or the campus bookstore directly.
According to Karen DiScala, a Barnes and Noble spokeswoman, the program thus far has been “very popular with students” and the bookseller “intends to direct a lot of resources to expanding it in the [upcoming] spring and fall semesters.”
While DiScala explained that Penn is not among the 25 schools to offer the program now, Associate Vice President of Business Services Christopher Bradie expressed the University’s interest in adopting it in the future.
In the meantime, the Penn Bookstore will help keep textbook prices low through “buy-back, making used books available, unbundling individual components of recommended materials and offering digital editions wherever possible,” Bradie wrote in an e-mail.
But with annotation, touch screen and bookmarking capabilities, as well as the potential to consolidate hundreds of titles into a thin interactive device, e-readers could become a lot more popular in the classroom in the future.
Amazon’s Kindle DX, a larger, more textbook-friendly version than its original counterpart, was released last May. Since then, the company has partnered with publishers Pearson, Cengage Learning and Wiley to offer a selection of textbooks for the e-reader.
Peter Decherney, an associate English professor and self-proclaimed “proud Kindle owner” explained that for textbook use, e-readers “may or may not be useful right now,” since “referencing back and forth pages is not as easy to do with an eBook.”
Some students held similar hesitations about translating material from print to screen.
“I’m the type of person who learns by writing and highlighting, and you can do that on e-readers,” College freshman Jake Shuster said. “But there’s something more concrete about actually writing rather than doing everything digitally.”
However, Shuster, who purchased the Nook last month, also acknowledged the device’s merits.
“Even though textbooks on the nook wouldn’t work best for me, they would still be a lot cheaper and more eco-friendly,” he said.
