CafeScribe - textbooks 2.0

This is a new service that has a lot of potential, although there is not a lot of content available at the moment I can see CafeScribe really taking off as perhaps another Facebook, its focus on students.



It offers e-book versions of university textbooks for download, at reportedly half the usual print price, providing the opportunity to save some money as well as a few trees. Students can also upload their own PDF documents and share notes, add "friends" to their profile and join student discussion groups.

This sharing of notes and documents might raise some issues about collaboration, or breach of copyright if students are sharing published texts. The service does address the latter issue in its Terms of Use but it is yet to be seen how this would be enforced. There have been a few similar sites offering "textbook sharing" which seem to cross the line, but as one author/lecturer remarked, for small time publishers it's probably not worth the cost of legal remedy.

External links:

• E-book site for students promises to save trees, money Sabena Suri, CNet Aug 2007
• Post by Kristen Nicole on Mashable, Aug 2007