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California is already doing this:

http://opensourcetext.org/

This is why California created the Open Source Textbook Project several years ago.
http://www.opensourcetext.org/

If it's good enough for MIT, ought to be good enough for everyone.
http://ocw.mit.edu/about/
http://www.opensourcetext.org/
(and many other references)

There's a few projects like that. As far as I know, they aren't really in widespread use.

A professor of mine once said that if you really want to know the material you should try writing a textbook on it. He was in the middle of writing various textbooks on Group Theory and Abstract Algebra. I think that's good advice for any expert in any field.

Here are some links I found after a quick google search:

California Open Source Textbook Project

Textbook Revolution

Open Textbook Repository

An open source Linear Algebra Textbook

A list of open source Math textbooks

Hope this helps!

California is going open source with their textbooks. The side effect of them trying to save money is that they may actually be helping stop this sort of lunacy by opening up the editing process to many more people.

If California wrote a law that automatically rejected any textbook accepted by Texas, then there would be at least 2 choices for the rest of the country. It would be entertaining at least to try and get a law like this passed. Who is going to stand up and defend the Texas process in California? It is also possible to generate open source text books and convince states that these are worthy of formal acceptance. Getting a nobel laureate to sign up as one of the editors of your open source textbook would probably grease the acceptance process. The great thing about an open source textbook is that the final product is much more that just a book. It would also come with the accumulated discussions as to how it reached its final form and its evolution over time would be visible. California has started this with one World History textbook and has (apparently very modest) plans to expand this to their full curiculum. California Open Source Textbook Project .

How many of the books that they're pulping are actually available out there with no additional cost? Not that many. This school will either be putting out a lot of money to license content in the digital format(s) that it previously owned in print or their students will learn the joy of researching from "snippet" view in Google Books.

Project Gutenberg and various free sources are good enough for accessing some pre-copyright books but, honestly, even as a researcher who specializes in 16th century books, it's hardly a drop in the bucket. Most of those 16th century books aren't freely available online but scanned as part of a wonderful but pricey subscription service (Early English Books Online). Not to mention that a lot of the freely-available Victorian editions are error-ridden or almost illegible.

And what of scholarship since the 1920s? Sure, there's the California Open Source Textbook Project and other similar endeavours. Haven't really gotten them all robustly off the ground and it doesn't help students who're looking for current scholarship on topic A when all we have are textbook-level summaries of B and C.

I know a lot of students like the idea of reading books online but very few of them are truly happy with what's out there so far. If there's no money for OCR conversion, you have a lot of scans in PDF or image format, sometimes dauntingly grainy. Even Google Books at its best has a hard time identifying the index properly in open-access books so have fun trying to look up your subjects in these multi-volume early twentieth century reference works which is what you have on hand. Or just give up and say that Wikipedia will be the default resource for everyone's research (but don't be surprised when your students complain that not all of their university professors agree with this approach!).

What's wrong with having a bit more of a learning commons feeling and some more carrels while still keeping most of the books? Do a shelf-read (your librarians do know what that practice is, I hope!), and cull out those "Personal Computing and You" volumes from 1998 (unless you're running a historical archive of the computing community). But, for the love of Pete!, don't get rid of all the books. The students won't be thanking you as they realize you still expect them to read and research but you're hamstringing them at the same time.

"What does 'source' mean when you say open source? If you mean creative commons or some other open licensing scheme, don't refer to it as 'source', which specifically refers to software."

No, the use has expanded in publishing and academia.
See here in California -- http://www.opensourcetext.org/
See here in the Federal government -- http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-1464&tab=summary

If schools really cared about anything but profits, then we'd have a mandatory open-source textbook market where academia would be free to create and modify textbooks. These textbooks would cost nothing. Certainly, there would still be a need for private market textbooks (on arcane and/or rapidly changing subjects) but I can see a substantial portion of textbook requirements displaced by an open system.

The "mandatory" part doesn't make a lot of sense. You can't force authors to write books for free. And although a lot of free textbooks do exist already (see my sig), you can't guarantee that for a particular subject, the best book will always be a free book rather than a non-free.

But other than that, what you're suggesting seems similar to something California is doing now. Motivated by the California state budget crisis, Governor Schwarzenegger has announced a Free Digital Textbook Initiative, which has gathered a list of free, online high school math and science textbooks that are aligned with state content standards. The intention is to have the books used in classrooms in fall 2009. This article has some useful background, but it mistakenly suggests that the arduous state adoption process will be an obstacle to the FDTI; statewide adoption only applies to K-8, but FDTI is doing high-school books. There was a previous, unsuccessful effort called COSTP, which tried to produce a history textbook using Wikibooks. Here is a BBC article about the present effort, and here is a newspaper opinion piece by the Governor. This is a transcript of a speech by the Governor, with some interesting Q&A at the end. Twenty books were submitted (press release, links). The four books from traditional publisher Pearson are consumable workbooks, not actual textbooks.

First of all, California has long been on the forefront to creating "open source" textbooks. See The California Open Source Textbook Project for more details, and it is something at least worth looking at. This is a several year old effort, so it isn't really newsworthy except in context with a story like this. Educators are trying... and fighting an uphill battle in this regard. But the effort is there.

Also, California has long been their own author of textbooks as well, where nearly every textbook used in the California public school system has been created for the schools in that state.

I'd agree with you, however, that the licensing costs and the publisher's money getting flung around the curriculum review board on the state level are things that should be eliminated. The amount of lobbying money dumped each year just on the state officials in California deciding what new textbooks should be adopted is enough to buy several new print on demand machines that could put a new edition of every text book in the hands each student each year.

What I discovered one day - because i dodn't visit the Wiki every day - was that the whole thing had been co-opted by some anarchistic fool who simply thought that *his* take on my project was a better one. That person literally stole my Wiki URL, erased what I and many others had constructed, and started putting his content on it. That, instead of simply starting his own project under a different name. I had to find an intermediary to help me negotiate with this person, just to get him to cease and desist. In the interim, I lost the promise of help for the project that I had received from several people who could have made the project move along faster. they were afraid that their work could/would be wiped out.

The entire incident caused immeasureable harm to my project, and to the project's self-image. The project lost viable contributions from nearly 100 contributors that really cared about what I was doing.This has since been repaired. I had to reconstruct everything from scratch. This disaster happened simply because there was no proper control designed into the process. Thiings are noe getting better on Wikipedia

If you want to see the project- the California Open Source Textbook Project [COSTP] now almost fully back from near-decimation, go to http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/COSTP_World_History_P roject

http://www.opensourcetext.org/

http://www.opensourcetext.org/

California spends $400,000,000.00 each year on K-12 textbooks.

If California printed their own textbooks from open content, freely available books, they would be able to spend the $400 million elsewhere or better yet return it to the citizens.

Tech fiber, internet access, etc just /. tech centric again, fixing the most basic problems with public schools would be hundreds of times more cost effective.

This project (COSTP/Wikibooks) invites anyone who is expert in World History to contribute. It's an important project because it will prove that a bona fide K-12 textbook *can* be created in open source - and most importantly, gain approval for use by the State Board of education, we would then be able to crack the costly commercial textbook business at the K-12 level.

COSTP has shown that you can have a *printed* textbook come out of open source at a 50% savings over commercial textbooks. California alone spends almost $400M for K-12 textbook in one year. Imagine how much $200M in savings would help California's money-strapped schools. Further, once other states get into the open content idea, many *billions* in savings could be realized.

It's very important that content contributors be willing to maintain strict adherence to the California State Education department Standards. This is the *only* way that a book like this will pass State Board of Education approval. if COSTP can get a few of these in the system, it will eventually open up for alternative histories, and other curriculum areas. Lastly, COSTP is devoted to bringing *printed* textbooks to the K-12 sector, worldwide, by spreading the meme that open content - created by knowledgeable peers, and based on local curriculum standards - can and should be used for basic education

I ran across this site some time ago while looking for EFL materials to contribute to, but it appears to have been in limbo for about two years, and no progress has been made. Perhaps this is the result of lobbying by the major textbook manufacturers? Nah.

(COSTP) - The California Open Source Textbook Project has been collaborating with Wikipedia on a K-12 (public high school) World History project. The project is based on California State Board of Education Framework standards.

The idea is to create a pilot basd on strict curriculum framework adherence, as this is the **only** way to get **any** state board of education to approve the end product for local school district use.

I would encourage anyone who is expert in World History to contribute to this project here Wikipedia World History Project

The goal of this project is to prove the concept. Once that's done, may other curriculum areas can be constructed - including those that deviate from curriculum frameworks.

A further goal is to have the resulting files generate a 'print-on-demand' file because the end product should be a printed text.

COSTP has shown that the cost of an open source K-12 (printed)textbook (hardcover)is 40-50% cheaper than K-12 textbooks published and distributed by commercial publishers.

Lastly, if you want to contribute content to the project, please contribute *only* your own (original)work. Content that is already copyrighted is not welcome/ We want to show State Boards of Education that open source textbook publishing can save the states - collectively - *billions* of dollars. e.g. California spends $400M+ every year on K-12 textbooks, with prices having risen at three times the rate of inflation since 1992.

COSTP is an official collaborator with Creative Commons, and was a recent participant in forging the Creative Commons educational license. Also, we hope in the future to work with the Connexions Project at Rice University, to get further tests piloted.

<a href="http://www.opensourcetext.org">California Open Source Textbook Project</a> (COSTP)(conducting pilot projects)

<a href="http://wikibooks.org/wiki/World_History_Proj ect">Wikipedia World History Project</a> (a beginning K-12 pilot inspired by COSTP and based on strict California State surriculum standards)

<a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html">MIT's OpenCourseWare project</a> (a university-based open curriculum project)

California Open Source Textbook Project (COSTP)(conducting pilot projects)

Wikipedia World History Project (a beginning K-12 pilot inspired by COSTP and based on strict California State surriculum standards)

MIT's OpenCourseWare project (a university-based open curriculum project)