By Robert Wilson

Reading textbooks on something that looks like a Palm Pilot? That’s what some IVCC students are experimenting with this semester.

The college has purchased two Rocket E-books, electronic devices about the size of a paperback novel, that are used to store and read text. Each e-book can store about 4,000 pages of text; IVCC’s have six books on them.

Emily Vescogni, the librarian teaching students how to use the e-books, explained that to load text on an e-book, the text is first downloaded from the Internet to a PC and then onto the e-book itself. That way the text can be stored on the PC in case it has to be deleted from the e-book.

Business instructor Bob Reese is testing the e-books in his Introduction to Business class. Half of the 32 students in the class are reading the traditional hard-copy text and the other half are using the e-book.

The students have two weeks to finish a reading assignment, and during that time, the students using the e-book reserve an hour to use the e-book in the library.

"We haven’t had any conflicts as far as people getting time to use them," Reese said.

After each reading assignment, Reese has his students write a one-page summary.

"I’m really looking forward to see if it (e-book) affects the learning," Reese said.

Vescogni said that each time a student uses one of the e-books, they fill out an evaluation. For the most part, the response from the users has been positive, she said. One of the few negative comments has been that "it’s hard to flip back and forth several pages."

According to both Vescogni and Reese, the major benefit of the e-book is its portability. Vescogni said, "It’s a lot easier than carrying 75 pounds around."

The e-books, which cost $199 each, were bought by a grant provided by IVCC’s Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Assessment.

While researching the e-books, Vescogni did not find any of the other 45 academic libraries in Illinois using them.