By Ally Mutnick, Daily Northwestern
At a digital town hall Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski revealed the Obama administration’s newest goal: electronic textbooks for every student by 2017. This is a goal the Norris Center Bookstore is also working toward for Northwestern, with about 700 of its 2000 titles available in an e-book format, according to bookstore manager Jerry Jacobson. “When we first started there were a handful,” Jacobson said. “Then it just started to grow and grow. It just grows every single term. I don’t know when it’s going to stop or if it ever will.” The bookstore acquired e-books four years ago, Jacobson said. The store sells login codes for certain e-books to students. These codes give students access to one of two e-book programs, Universal Digital Textbooks and Nook Study, a downloadable software produced by Barnes & Noble that students can use on any computer. Currently, e-book readers such as the Nook and the Kindle are not compatible with the e-books available at the campus bookstore, Jacobson said. The benefit of the e-book software is that it allows teachers to write additional notes in the text and highlight or share certain paragraphs for students, Jacobson said.
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