[p2p-research] lightfoot book sharing ?

[Andy Robinson]

Not so sure as I agree with the autopilot thing...  Yes, universities as
macro-institutions tend to run systemically, but something like which books
are assigned as readings and how necessary they are for students are not
being set at the macro level, they're being set by each individual lecturer
(of whom there are thousands) - at least, that's how it works in the UK.

So, a lecturer can decide to run the whole course from a textbook which
students are expected to buy - or they can decide to run it from a set of
readings they assign, which might include things which are freely available
(e.g. journal articles the university has free access to online, or
'classic' texts which are out of print).  In many cases they can also make
these texts available to students either as a hardcopy to photocopy or
actually provide a set of photocopies to each student (entirely legal under
"fair use" as long as it's little enough of the full volume).  The lecturers
I know, do take *strongly* into account availability to students when making
such decisions - because no lecturer wants a class full of students who
haven't done the reading, or no-one to turn up because they haven't done the
reading.  The less effort it takes students to get the readings, the higher
the quality of the classes.

There's also BTW a new trend of putting assigned readings on the web instead
of photocopying them for students - most universities no doubt use their
internal networks, but (presumably due to internet incompetence) I've seen
quite a few things leaking out onto the public Internet via course readings.

Michel - point taken, it's still very expensive for someone who's poor -
aren't students often from elite / middle-class backgrounds though?  $40-50
is also very expensive by comparison with mass market paperback fiction and
"pop" science/psychology/etc, which in the UK starts at about $10 new and
rapidly declines to postage price for online second-hand purchases (and less
from second-hand shops).

If photocopying is a lot cheaper then this is sure to have a big impact.
It's rather strange that it's so much cheaper in Thailand, I wonder if this
is typical of the South - maybe Northern photocopy sellers are making huge
markups on cost, or paying some kind of photocopy rent?  Companies seem to
scam horribly on printer ink as well, which also impacts how far people can
rely on online copies (as I've said before, only a minority seem ready to
read long pieces on-screen).  For poor students, reading on screen without
paper might be even cheaper than copying, provided they have computers which
would have to be a big "if".
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