Excessive use of textbooks and paper leaves a sizable carbon footprint, and because Portland—and Portland State specifically—is concerned with sustainability, e-reading methods are gaining popularity.
Other organizations, such as Multnomah County Library, have begun to implement measures that can potentially reduce paper use. In September, Multnomah County Library launched a program allowing readers to check out books online to read on their Kindles. A user must have accounts with the library and Amazon in addition to a Kindle (or the free Kindle application for mobile phones) to download the Kindle e-books from the Library2Go website.
While the library did have e-books available prior to their Kindle program, the new business relationship between Amazon and Overdrive, the Library2Go servicer, has added e-books in a format that is Kindle-compatible.
“More and more people are buying e-readers, and there’s a tremendous amount happening in the marketplace,” said Brandon Barnett, the electronic resources librarian at Multnomah County Library. Cindy Gibbon, Multnomah County’s senior library manager, added that the library was very pleased that the e-books were now available on the Kindle.
PSU also has several initiatives in place that can potentially reduce paper use.
The Branford P. Millar Library has taken some steps to reduce paper waste. It already has e-books and, according to engineering librarian Michael Bowman, the library buys the majority of its journals in digital format: 80 percent of the journals are online and 30 percent are in print, with the overlapping 10 percent available in both formats.
“We are buying more and more e-journals,” said Reference Coordinator Linda Absher. “The faculty love it [because they can] access them at home or work.” She added that there were some drawbacks, including the fact that the library has to borrow some of the journals from Summit, but noted that the library is trying to work around the problems.
“Almost all people prefer journals in e-form,” said Bowman, who also noted that the demand for books in electronic form is more recent than that for e-journals. Bowman said that most people still prefer physical books, but that he believes e-books will become much more popular and overtake paper textbooks eventually.
According to Bowman, buying books and journals in electronic format saves the library a lot of space and money needed for archiving and organizing its collection. He said that the library plans to continue purchasing e-journals and e-books while also working on shifting their internal paper use to a more electronic means, utilizing Google docs and email instead of paper equivalents.
Sophomore Stoney Rose said he would definitely support a shift to convert more books to digital format. “[It’s] a lot cheaper and better for the environment. It’s also a lot lighter than a bunch of books,” Rose said.
Senior Moornah Majam, however, expressed some reservations. “There needs to be a balance of both [print and electronic sources],” Majam said. “PSU is very non-traditional. People who are a lot older come in. There should at least be a resource for the technologically-challenged or some kind of training.”
“Until we have electronic materials that can be engaged like a physical text, I’m reluctant to go completely paperless,” said University Studies assistant professor Anmarie Trimble. “Research shows that engaging a text increases learning. It becomes a passive experience when reading from a screen.”
Trimble also said she was concerned by e-journals because if the school can no longer afford the subscription fee, it loses everything that in paper format would have been preserved in a physical archive, granting publishers a lot more power over libraries and institutions.
The Portland State Bookstore is another campus outlet with alternatives to traditional textbooks. Aside from the book buyback and used textbooks program, there are also hundreds of e-books available for purchase, according to Kenneth Brown, the president of the bookstore. However, digital sales only comprise about 1.5 percent of the bookstore’s business, even though e-books are sometimes cheaper than their used, paper counterparts.
One possible avenue for change is the move to free e-textbooks supported by ads, a product currently available from the British company Bookboon. Students can download digital textbooks to an e-reader or to a computer, from which they can easily print the book.
“Currently, we are compatible with 90 to 95 percent of all [e-reader] platforms,” said Kristian Madsen, the CEO of Bookboon, adding that an e-book’s carbon footprint is much smaller than that of a print textbook because no paper or chemicals are required to make them, and there is no shipping required.
According to Madsen, the company has good traffic from the U.S., with over 50,000 of their textbooks read annually in Oregon alone.
However, Brown concluded that the low numbers at his store are due to how students interact with the course material. “The print version is still what students desire,” he said. “Not all textbooks work well in [digital] format.” Brown added that that the bookstore “catches flak when a book is out,” even if the book is still available in digital format.
“Unfortunately, there’s a limit [to reducing paper use] in practical terms when operating at this level,” Brown said. He added: “[We will] continue our efforts. It is very much an in-house organic thing, and we work with the campus.”