John Cumbers - what is the size of the market, do people make money out of textbooks. Example of Cell - Alberts etc. - Cameron Neylon

Some people make a lot of money out of textbooks but not very many. Very long tail. - Cameron Neylon

Big text books take a lot of work - how does the textbook look in a web based world. What is a textbook for if the university doesn't exist any more. - Cameron Neylon

chris is pretty god like ... but not christ, i dont think. :) - Kaitlin Thaney

thanks for that - typing not good at this time in the morning - insufficient coffee... - Cameron Neylon

Chris - the lack of return on text book authoring is an opportunity for new types of approach. - Cameron Neylon

There is no shortage of text books, there is a glut - Cameron Neylon

Alicia, "I would pay $20 if I knew it went straight to the author" - Cameron Neylon

discussing the concept of "beta" versions of books. The Pragmatic Programming series. - Cameron Neylon

Alicia - benefits for people who need accessible versions - Cameron Neylon

John - PDF sucks, need something much better than PDF for flexibility. - Cameron Neylon

Martin - but want access to multiple formats - Cameron Neylon

Bosco - print on demand is getting cheap and very high quality - Cameron Neylon

Sean - open access text books is not a technical problem but a social problem - how do you fund the content - Cameron Neylon

Project at stanford to support making course material creative commons - Cameron Neylon

Problems - how do you create new content (resource). If use legacy content then there are problems with copyright infringing content - Cameron Neylon

Me - what about using Wikipedia? - Cameron Neylon

Chris - Wikipedia a reference, not a teaching tool. These things are different. Need to provide a route through the content for the average student. - Cameron Neylon

Needs to be seen from the perspective of the teacher. - Cameron Neylon

Good question - what do teachers use a textbook for? How do you leverage the needs of the teacher to support the creation of better objects that could replace textbooks. - Cameron Neylon

Bosco - major contribution of publishers is the editor - collabortive authoring is a challenge for long documents - Cameron Neylon

debate over the value of a well integrated long work - clearly works well when you actually work through the whole book - does anyone ever really do that? - Cameron Neylon

John - would like guidance through the process of using a "text" - where you've been and where you're going - quizes, checkups etc.. - Cameron Neylon

comment from boston: what to do about the various flavors of CC licenses on OCW content? most have BY-NC, some materials with SA - a design decision made without the forethought of interoperability, reuse (in the context of virtual textbooks) and remix. how/ what to do? - Kaitlin Thaney

How much does it cost to fly in eight people for four weeks to get a draft together. Suggesting around $50k, so 500 people at $100 each. Bosco points out many people who are setting up courses for the first time could have an interest in putting the work in. - Cameron Neylon

Kaitlin - I'll try and feed that in. I think people here are relatively unaware that these already exist. Do you know what the best current examples are? - Cameron Neylon

Question: Is this something Google.org might fund? (that's a reminder to myself) - Cameron Neylon

Chris - in the world where we have $50k to support one of these could put out a call for proposals - Cameron Neylon

would have to check OCW policies, but i know that they're not all consistent across the board for various universities across the world, and most definitely not CC-BY ... lemme look :) thanks cameron. just something to noodle on. - Kaitlin Thaney

Need to identify a good area where a current text doesn't exist - Cameron Neylon

Martin - is the two week retreat model a good one or a wider online collaboration - Cameron Neylon

Me: need the "retreat" or a focussed effort to get the seed content in palce - Cameron Neylon

Martin is a retreat per se great or does it need to be cheaper? What is the right number of people. - Cameron Neylon

Chris - what field is small enough and needs a textbook- me thinking Small Angle Scattering but not sure this is of interest to this group really - Cameron Neylon

K, so to be part of the OCW consortium, the content needs to be subject to a CC license, it seems, or at least is strongly recommended. MIT is CC-BY-NC-SA. but other institutes, such as Michigan State doesn't cite a CC license and provides some content only read-only. So short answer ... it varies. Ugh. - Kaitlin Thaney

Sean discussing status of Stanford efforts on open curriculum content - currently in a holding pattern - Cameron Neylon

Asking the question - why is there no secondary market for teaching materials given the popularrity of blackboad and moodle - Cameron Neylon

Fabbiano talking about NZ universities purchasing Springer textbooks "like journals" on a chapter by chapter basis - Cameron Neylon

The books are purchased as electronic versions by libraries, as far as I know as whole, not chapter per chapter, but can download only chapter of interest - Kubke

Hey I'm in this meeting. - Bosco Ho from iPhone

science has a strong culture of attribution, but can be tough to do on the web - Duncan Hull

I was too busy following the discussion, forgot to comment here. - Martin Fenner

Thanks for the input from afar, KT, esp, your first comment - rumors of my divinity are greatly exaggerated. :-) - Chris Patil

Sorry, coming in late. Before O'Reilly programming, etc books weren't exactly what we've become used to. I wonder, even in a non open-textbook world, what would happen if a publisher that enabled people perhaps not that well known to just write stuff. - Deepak Singh

Complete Yale course on iTunes University: http://www.tuaw.com/2009... - Martin Fenner

Just came across wikibook (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki...) through this article (http://mashable.com/2009...) (via @edNZ). I also read (where?) a suggetsion to have students 'edit' wikipedia pages instead of handing in papers in their courses. Maybe a collaborative effort having the students contribute to wikibook content as part of their course requirements might be a good place to start? - Kubke

OH well, I came across this page in wikibook: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki... I guess any project will have to have better editorial control? - Kubke