Last week, Elizabeth's post about books that mat­tered in col­lege was a poignant review of the last­ing impres­sion of books: both in our minds and in the groove cut into our shoul­der from increas­ingly heavy over-the-shoulder book bags.

While noth­ing will ever replace the tac­tile sen­sa­tion of thumb­ing through hun­dreds of high­lighted pages, e-books are here to stay, whether librar­i­ans like it or not. For­tu­nately, phys­i­cal book-loving cul­ture is alive and well in the world, so the advent of dig­i­tal texts doesn't seem to be push­ing out the tra­di­tional form just yet.

A recent arti­cle in The Chron­i­cle of Higher Edu­ca­tion dis­cussed a new state law requir­ing that all post-secondary edu­ca­tion text­books be dig­i­tized by 2010. (Post-secondary edu­ca­tion = all edu­ca­tion after high school.) While not affect­ing the exis­tence of tree-made text­books, the law will force pub­lish­ers to ensure that all of their mate­r­ial is avail­able electronically.

Col­lege text­books are expen­sive. In fact, text­books often highly con­sid­ered when esti­mat­ing the cost of tuition each semes­ter. E-books tend to run far cheaper than phys­i­cal text­books, and The Chron­i­cle notes an exam­ple of an e-book cost­ing nearly half of its phys­i­cal coun­ter­part. HALF!

A quick search on Ama­zon reveals that the top account­ing col­lege text­books run between $140 and $200. Con­sider that the aver­age col­lege stu­dent pur­chases at least one text­book per 3–5 classes per semes­ter, and we're talk­ing poten­tially thou­sands of dol­lars bet­ter spent on gas. Or Cheez-Its. In addi­tion to a huge cost ben­e­fit to stu­dents, text­book com­pa­nies are likely grow­ing tired of the count­less unsold books returned to them each semes­ter. An e-book can't be returned. At least not yet.

As an Eng­lish major who took three lit­er­a­ture review classes in one semes­ter and a com­mu­ni­ca­tions major who took another three comm. the­ory classes that same semes­ter, I attest that my shoul­ders (and wal­let) have yet to recover from tens of thou­sands of pages bur­den­ing me for those 14 straight weeks. (And, since I have a near-religious stigma against throw­ing away, reselling or aban­don­ing books of any kind, I still own all of them. From each semes­ter. Sigh.)

While this post may sound like a pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment cham­pi­oning the mer­its of the e-book, this cam­paign doesn't need much sup­port, as it's already hap­pen­ing. In a world that's grow­ing more accus­tomed to pay­ing bills, book­ing flights and find­ing love online, it's no sur­prise that edu­ca­tion is mak­ing the e-transition, too.

Per­haps next week we'll dis­cuss how the modern-day class­room is trans­form­ing… within your com­puter screen.