Many people believe that they are being eco-friendly when they purchase an eBook instead of a traditional paperback or hardback book. After all, aren’t you saving trees by purchasing the e-version? While it’s true that the book industry has a significant impact on our environment, the manufacture and production of the technology on which eBooks are read could be even more detrimental.

Think about it. The trend right now is to read your eBooks on an e-reader tablet, such as the Nook, Kindle, Sony Reader or the more multipurpose iPad. All of these devices consume power, require natural resources to manufacture such as plastic which is man-made but derived from oil… and cause the burning of fossil fuels in transport to where they are sold. Not to mention the fact that planned obsolescence is ingrained into the tech industry, meaning that as soon as the market has become saturated with one sort of e-reader, the companies that produce them devise a new one to make the old one obsolete. Therefore, the average consumer must buy a new product – contributing even more to the devices’ carbon footprint – to not fall “behind the times” in terms of technology.

Some people might argue that you do not have to purchase an e-Reader to read eBooks, and that’s true. People can read eBooks from their home computers. However, computers and laptops also have a huge impact on the environment. Again, we have an example of machines that are part of planned obsolescence by tech companies. Tons of obsolete computers end up in landfills. So computers and laptops also contribute to resource depletion, environmental pollution and ultimately, climate change.

While many of us would like to believe that the solution is to purchase and encourage the development of eco-friendly computers and devices, the truth is that as long as planned obsolescence remains in the tech industry, and the rate at which people use and discard these machines remains high, the production of laptops and devices like eReaders is simply unsustainable. The best we can do to use technology more sustainably is to hold on to our computers for as long as possible, share computers with family and friends or use public computers at our city or university library, and recycle our computers and devices when they become too outdated to be of any use.

Compare this to the book industry, in which the primary factors of environmental concern is that they are derived from paper, which requires the cutting down of trees, the energy expended during the manufacturing process and in the paper mills, the transfer of books to wholesale sellers, and the transport of books to individual retail bookstores (like your university’s student bookstore). For the average reader who reads 5-10 books a year, it’s usually a better bet to go with a traditional hardcover or paperback book after all, or better yet, buy used books or check out books from the library. Additionally many books have a longer lifespan than just a single reader, so this helps toad to their increased lifetime value as well as to decrease the lifetime environmental cost of each book.

This guest post was written by Mariana Ashley
 

Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031@gmail.com.

In an effort to escape from the ever present bad news that seems to be the cornerstone of our current civilization I have spent much time recently watching old movies, and reading good books.

The desire that I feel to escape to a “happier time” is understandable, after all, we are living in an unstable world, where no one knows what the next shoe that will drop will be. Oddly enough, instead of turning to fantasy or other such genres I find greater comfort in books that mimic reality, reading about the extremes of what could be possible, but thankfully what has not yet occurred.

One such book is “Death Wave” by Stephen Kahn. This book provides an excellent analysis into much of what is currently happening in our world – in terms of the financial crisis.

From the book cover:

“In the midst of a financial crisis one man must save the world with the aid of a maniacal serial killer, his dead hamster, and a homeless bum named “Troll”.

Stewart is a young man trying to keep it together during the worst financial crisis since the great depression. The corrupt politics and corporate scandals…”

If you want to read more about this book, or listen to free excerpts from the audio book, please go to http://www.kafilmworks.com/deathwave/contents

We live in a society where the value of the written word has steadily eroded in recent decades.  This erosion can be seen in a number of ways, starting with the rise of text messaging and instant messages as a form of communication in which shortening words is the norm, to the steady decline of basic formality.  Not only are most freshman college students incapable of spelling, but many have to be taught standard ways to address one’s elders in a letter (or an email to a professor).  Given such a decline, combined with the increased time that most of us spend in front of digital media (TV’s, computer’s video games…) one might think that the book- that indispensable, tome that has helped to shape our society, would be in decline as well, yet the contradictory is true.

Our society is one that has elevated literacy as a human good, and has, as a consequence of this elevated books.  We all have bookshelves filled with volumes of hard cover books, some of these we have read, but many (either given to us as a gift, or bought by us in a fit of passion and desire to change ourselves) will stand there for years collecting dust without having a broken spine; indeed, we often collect books as a sign of our intellectual prowess.  What amazes me is that in our world- where abbreviations are steadily replacing many words, we still value the spoken word as an “end in itself”, so much so that we judge developing countries on the literacy rate of their population.  The HDI (human development index), an annual report that rates countries from most, to least developed, looking at nations’ standards of living, mentions the issue of literacy as a key indicator of a States’ development.

Talking about the cost of books, this too has changed, from the days where all books were affordable, to today, where the cost of some books (almost anything printed 50 years ago or more) has shrunk virtually to $0, with e-books being freely available online, to the costs of others skyrocketing to a point where one is almost required to take out a second mortgage to afford a few textbooks (this may sound funny, but I kid you not, the cost of many accounting or business textbooks is upwards of $200, and students are required to purchase 4-5 of these books a semester!)

It is my hope that with the increased use of technology, e-books and other media, such as We Compare Books, book prices will again shrink as publishers realize the un-sustainability of such increases and figure out other ways to profit from our addiction to books (perhaps using product placement in examples, If Jimmy buys a bottle of Coke for $… and a bottle of Pepsi costs…, but here I am of course joking).

Today there are many places on the Internet that promise free textbooks, unfortunately most of these are scams, and the websites will load your computer with tons of spyware, or worse. Despite this, there are a few places where you can get tons of free e-books. Although you are unlikely to find free textbooks, you will be able to find free electronic versions of many books, primarily classics, but also many other novels that may be required reading for many of your intro classes.

The best site for free e-books on the web is the Gutenberg Project; this site is dedicated to scanning literature and currently has thousands of books in its database. The other cool thing about this site is that many of the books are available in multiple formats, including audio for some books. This means that if you already know what you are looking for in the book, you can hit “ctrl+F” in your browser and find the right section of the book right away. This is a great study tool, and I recommend using it to prepare for exams after you have read required sections/chapters.

Another great place to find free books is Google Books. This is great because Google Books has tons of books on file and people working there are scanning more books constantly. However the problem with this is that you are unable to search for keywords, since the pages are displayed as images, and you are unable to copy or manipulate the images in any way.

More locally, some public libraries, especially state libraries and presidential libraries, offer electronic data and sometimes access to private electronic book catalogs. One such catalog, if you are studying in the IT sector, is Safari Tech Books Online. It is by far the most complete computer books online catalog; books are readily available. To access books requires a membership, but, as stated before, this might be included in your membership with your local public library.

If you do not find what you are looking in freely available electronic format, do not despair! More books are published in electronic format every day and many more are being converted to electronic format so even though the book you are currently looking for may not be available, the next one might very well be.

I have a pretty good relationship with many of my former professors, and sometimes I ask them to contribute their thoughts to some of the issues that students face.
Here is a blog post written by a former professor of mine, I hope that you find this useful.

Professor Colette Mazzucelli, Department of Political Science, Hofstra University and Center for Global Affairs, New York University

The more we teach, the more we learn about… discovering ways to save money for our students as book prices increase. Examples from my courses this semester are helpful illustrations. The comparative politics coursefor the Hofstra undergraduates, features three texts, which Norton sells as a package. The e-Book option is one the company’s sales representative helped me to identify as much less expensive for students. This package features efficient access to content on personal laptops in class as well as ease in note taking and markup right in the e-Book margins. Students who prefer to purchase the print copies of the different texts are encouraged to buy the much cheaper second editions even though new third editions just appeared in print. For those eager to compare, the new third editions are now placed on reserve as well in Hofstra’s Library. The Facebook reference to We Compare Books is available for undergraduates in my different class sections as they shop for cheap textbooks in various courses. Bookstores may prefer that students purchase individual textbooks, instead of packages, because these texts can be resold when the same classes are offered in subsequent years. In the immediate term, however, buying texts in packages or in bulk, as the next example illustrates, offers genuine savings for students. At New York University, my international relations syllabus for those graduates new to the M.S. Program in Global Affairs features extensive reading. This is a foundation course, which should also offer students ideas to develop research interests as the program of studies progresses to the thesis requirement. In this fall’s learning community, one of the members works for Pearson and offered to sell the others one of the required volumes for purchase at a discount price. Another option to keep costs low is to require texts for purchase that are available in paperback edition. In courses with such a wide selection of readings, the effective and efficient option in terms of savings and organization is to assign a minimum number of texts for purchase, let’s say five, all available in paperback. The rest of the readings are posted on the Blackboard learning system as PDF files for students to access from their home computers each week. The international relations syllabus also integrates progressively the wealth of public education materials available free of charge online, including multimedia resources and written transcripts. In these ways, the course retains breadth and depth in the readings, excessive trips to the Library Reserve Desk are unnecessary, and students do not spend as much for required course purchases. The future holds the promise of additional savings as many books are made available on the public commons by universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In this era of ever-rising tuition rates for higher education, every option to save counts during college years. Students should be able to afford the books for the courses they pay a substantial tuition to attend. This adds to the teacher’s responsibilities in course design to continue to identify savings options without sacrificing quality in higher education.