A technological revolution is brewing on college campuses. And if the insurgents win, the venerable college textbook, as well as the traditional campus bookstore, will be forever changed.
Textbook publishers are offering new computer and printing systems that allow professors to custom-design textbooks by handpicking course materials from electronic databases stocked with traditional textbooks, magazine articles and other published information. These customized books can be printed in limited quantities by the campus bookstore and distributed to students, sometimes within hours--not weeks or months--after ordering.
The first of these systems nationwide, to be operated at USC in partnership with McGraw-Hill, is to be announced this morning on the Los Angeles campus. During the three-year partnership, USC and McGraw-Hill, the nation's second-largest college textbook publisher, will also develop new electronic course materials and explore ways to link the customized publishing system to an electronic library under development at the university.
USC's first customized textbooks are scheduled to roll off the campus bookstore's new presses next January. Although just a few books--including business and law texts--will be available initially for customization, university officials said they expect dozens of professors to participate in the program for the fall, 1991, semester.
"This is a real revolution in how we deliver the textbook to the student," said Carl Tyson, president of McGraw-Hill's college textbook division. "We have been talking about doing this for 20 years, but this is the first real step."
With the USC pilot project, McGraw-Hill is taking the early lead in a battle to bring new computer and publishing technology to the $2-billion-per-year college text market. If the experiment succeeds at the university level, publishers say, it will be only a matter of time before elementary and secondary schools are offered textbook customizing services.
Customized teaching materials are nothing new, particularly on campus, where professors have long created anthologies of printed materials for their classes. But with advances in computers, databases and printing, professors have access to a greatly expanded range of materials, allowing them to put their personal stamp on their curriculum through creative packaging of course readings.
