Digital Copies of Textbooks Forum

[Redamon1]

^ This is great. Thank you. Hopefully Aspen and others will make digital copies more widely available soon. The ones I need are not available. Until then, I think I'm stuck with buying a hard copy and then scanning the book myself. I might unbind the book first, which should make scanning easier/faster.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Bump. After trying out the digital way for one of my classes this fall, I want to go all digital in the spring.

I'd like to avoid scanning my textbooks if I can. Anyone know where to buy digital copies? Westlaw seems to have begun doing this, but their version of the book can only be edited using their online platform. REALLY?! What's the point if you can't use your tablet, huh?

http://store.westlaw.com/products/law-s ... fault.aspx

So, any leads to purchase PDFs or other notable formats on tablets would be greatly appreciated!

Aspen books are available in Kindle format: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss? ... 0casebooks

Thanks! Unfortunately I use an iPad so that format won't work...

Can't you download the Kindle reader onto your iPad?

[laxbrah420]

Did this 2011 guy ask for yall's opinions on the utility of digital books?

[Redamon1]

Bump. After trying out the digital way for one of my classes this fall, I want to go all digital in the spring.

I'd like to avoid scanning my textbooks if I can. Anyone know where to buy digital copies? Westlaw seems to have begun doing this, but their version of the book can only be edited using their online platform. REALLY?! What's the point if you can't use your tablet, huh?

http://store.westlaw.com/products/law-s ... fault.aspx

So, any leads to purchase PDFs or other notable formats on tablets would be greatly appreciated!

Aspen books are available in Kindle format: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss? ... 0casebooks

Thanks! Unfortunately I use an iPad so that format won't work...

Can't you download the Kindle reader onto your iPad?

That's a good idea. I didn't think of using the Kindle App on iPad. I should try that, though maybe I'll begin with a cheap book to avoid a $150 experiment. Hopefully the annotating and synching functions are as great as on the other iPad apps like Good Reader and iAnnotate (combined with Dropbox).

[krepitch]

^ This is great. Thank you. Hopefully Aspen and others will make digital copies more widely available soon. The ones I need are not available. Until then, I think I'm stuck with buying a hard copy and then scanning the book myself. I might unbind the book first, which should make scanning easier/faster.

This reminded me of a few things. Maybe you will find them interesting.

First, I started reading a blog called iphonejd.com. It's [obviously] a blog about using iPhones and iPads as lawyers. You might want to look around there because the author has some interesting material. Second, one book he recommended there is about going paperless. I bought the book and found it very interesting. It's really inexpensive and you might want to buy it. You can read the post here --LinkRemoved-- ... parks.html.

One of the chapters in the book covers digitizing printed books. You can see on Youtube some methods people use to cut the books (paper cutters, circular saws, etc.), but the Fujitsu ScanSnap seems to be the scanner of choice. It's kind of expensive, but you might be able to share costs with your friends (or convince your library to invest in a tablesaw and a scanner...LOL).

Good luck.

[yeff]

3L here. Used an Aspen Digital book for both of my crim pro classes over the last year.
Best deal around, because they steeply discount the digital edition if you buy it along with the book itself.
After selling the wrapped-in-plastic new copy to a classmate, the net cost of the digital book was around $20-30.
Searchability in class is actually pretty nice, though not really a big deal. Easy to highlight.
Having it everywhere without the weight was great. One class had a closed book exam, so no loss, and it's never good to need your casebook in an exam anyway.

[Redamon1]

Thanks for all the input!