[Think free or die]

Tossing Campbell's Biology is a real loss. Lots of good content in a fast-changing field. My students have both books and e-text available, but I find that most of them make little use of the e-text. I think it's useful when they need a quick lookup because of the search features, but it's harder on the eyes and some of the publishers have poor interfaces.

When administrators try to eliminate books, they need to be sure that students truly have access to their instructional materials at home. That's not always so simple if they don't have the right technology available at home, or if there is shared custody and one parent lacks technology. Kids today all seem to have cell phones, but many of them don't have printers, and laptop access can be spotty. Laptop carts in the classroom aren't enough, especially in an AP class. There aren't enough classroom hours to cover the content and students need to do a lot of work at home. Perhaps these teachers have the kids do their labs at home and read at school . . .

[GingisK]

There is a great deal of material that is not available on the Internet, and will never be available there. Some very important technical material such as engineering standards are available only when you cough up a wad of cash.