<p>But the point is that there ARE online and e-book versions of the books, journal articles, and reputable institutions – increasingly so. The only frustration I have is with the cost of purchasing materials online for people not affiliated with a university – I’m not happy with the idea that it will cost me $30 to download the full text of a research journal – but while my d. was in school, all of that stuff was available to her without charge via the CU library system. </p>
<p>And when I mentioned keeping books for use as a “reference” – I meant that literally. There was a time when it seemed useful to me to hang onto my $120 constitutional law casebook, because who knows when I might find it useful to re-read *Griswold v. Connecticut *? OK, the casebook only had an excerpt and not the whole case, but it had all the important bits, right? But nowadays in less time that in would take me to find the casebook on my shelf, I can enter the case name into Google and up pops links to at least half a dozen sources of the full text… as well as the Wikipedia article. </p>
<p>I also kept college literature books that were full of classics – I mean, it’s nice to have the complete works of Shakespeare or an anthology of English poetry on the book shelf. But all that stuff is also free on the internet these days – if its famous and its out of copyright, I can Google it, download it, whatever. </p>
<p>If the books managed to keep their pristine condition, it would be one thing – but I’ve got shelves full of books with yellowing pages and a musty smell when leaving through them – not much pleasure in that. Even when my son was in high school, sometimes he would be assigned a book, and I’d tell him that we had a copy at home- and then I’d dig out my old copy and it would just be in such brittle condition he wouldn’t want to read it. He didn’t mind having used books, but paper decays. Ten, fifteen years down the line, even books that have been sitting on a shelf all that time start to look pretty beat up.</p>
<p>Anyway, I’m utterly convinced the kindle & ipad are the death knell of the college textbook industry. It’s only a matter of time before college students are carrying all of their assigned reading around on a single device.</p>