Shelves of textbooks line the aisles of the University Bookstore.
Michelle Siebels, a sophomore news-editorial major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, stands in the aisle and reads selected essays for her class out of the required text.
Siebels has five classes this semester. The total cost of all her required textbooks is nearly $900. For her, that's too much to spend.
Instead, Siebels spent $150 and comes to the bookstore to read the books she did not buy.
A program from Rice University, Connexions, could change the way Siebels and other students access academic literature - by making it free.
Connexions publishes scholarly content on cnx.org. Students, professors and the public can then access and use it free of charge.
All content is organized into modules open for use as long as the publisher is given proper attribution under a creative commons license.
"(Connexions) advances the knowledge of humanity in ways never possible before," Joel Thierstein, executive director of Connexions, said.
Thierstein said users from all over the world access the network, Nebraska included.
The University Bookstore is looking into implementing a similar system, director John Parish said. CaféScribe, the program planned for use at UNL, was purchased by the company that runs the bookstore.
Unlike Connexions, CaféScribe is not a free service. Instead of modules, published books are put online at CafeScribe.com, where students pay a fee to access the book. Hypothetically, Parish said students could pick up a packet for CaféScribe next to the textbook version in the bookstore.
Details of CaféScribe on UNL's campus are still vague, Parish said, because of the program's young age. Parish described the system as "almost Facebook-y."
Besides the design of CaféScribe, Parish said digital content could be well received for a wide range of students, distance learners included. CaféScribe also allows students to publish notes and subscribe to other student's notes as well.
"The collaborative nature of being able to share online," Parish said, "that's what we're after."
christinadevries@dailynebraskan.com
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