Mississippi State University students were given a new option when purchasing their textbooks this semester: e-textbooks.      Carsyn Byars, freshman English major, purchased one of her textbooks in e-book format from the Barnes & Noble campus booksellers website. 
“It was cheaper to get it as an e-textbook, and I already owned a Nook, so I bought it that way,” she said. 
When Byars went to her general psychology class on the first day and was told no electronic devices were allowed in the classroom, she said she was not sure what to do.
 ”I asked my coworkers what I should do and one of them told me to just talk to Dr. (Tom) Carskadon about it, that if it was going to be a problem, he would help me fix it,” she said.
Other students are opting for a time consuming, illegal but free method of obtaining their books in digital format. 
“We had iPads before e-books were really becoming popular,” one student said. “So we would buy the textbooks, scan every page onto our computer, save it as a PDF document and return the books.”
This allowed them to have the entire book as a readable document on their iPads. 
“All of my books weigh a total of one-and-a-half pounds now, as opposed to the bookbag full of books that I had before, weighing in at, oh, 20 pounds?  Not to mention the fact that we saved that $300 on textbooks,” the student said.
Abigail Voller, an MSU English teacher, is also scanning readings as PDF files to read on her iPad.
 
“I really like it because it keeps me from having to tote 20 pounds of books around, but that also means I have to have a copy of the readings to scan,” Voller said.
Xplana, a company that is creating e-textbooks and working to create a social learning platform, recently published the results of a study on the growth of digital textbooks.
In the study, Rob Reynolds and Yevgeny Ioffe project that by 2014, digital textbook sales will account for 18.8 percent of the overall United States textbook market.
In 2011, digital textbook sales only accounted for 2.5 percent of the U.S. textbook market, according to Xplana’s study. 
Barnes & Noble at MSU offered e-textbooks as an option on the store’s website this semester for the first time.  Listed as “NookStudy,” students had the option to rent or buy e-textbooks instead of purchasing traditional paper copies. 
According to the Barnes & Noble website, however, “You cannot use a Nook to read e-textbooks.”  The NookStudy e-textbooks can only be read by a downloaded program to a PC or Mac computer. 
Byars, upon learning her Nook could not be used to read her textbook was unhappy and confused. 
“Why are they advertising it with the name of their e-reader if you can only read it on your actual computer?” she asked.
Barnes & Nobles’ website states the screens are too small on Nook and mobile devices to be used to read textbooks, which are full of diagrams and other images.
Amazon is also offering an e-textbook rental program for Kindle users. The e-textbooks, though, are designed to be readable on any device that has the Kindle application downloaded.  That means the student can read a Kindle textbook from a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android device, Windows Phone, Blackberry or Kindle.
However, the no electronic devices policy would mean Byars could not bring her book to class because it was electronic. 
“We don’t really use the book in class, so I didn’t worry about asking (Dr. Carskadon),” she said. “If it was a book that I was required to have in class but couldn’t use an electronic version, I don’t think it should be offered by Barnes & Noble as an e-textbook.”
Carskadon said he does not require students to have the textbook in class, so it does not matter what format that chose to buy. 
“All the student needs in my class is the workbook.  And as far as I know, they haven’t started offering that as an e-book yet,” he said.
Jerry Emison, vice-chair of the Faculty Senate, said the need to change the policy to prevent e-textbooks has not presented itself in the Faculty Senate meetings. 
“That doesn’t mean that it won’t, but it is the type of issue that is likely to have a very split decision and in the end, we’d say it was up to the individual teachers to decide,” he said.
The issue comes down to responsibility, Emison said, explaining if a student wants to bring an iPad to class because that is where the book is, then spend the next hour surfing Facebook, that is their prerogative. 
“We’re teachers, not babysitters.  I’m not going to list out every single thing you can and cannot do in my classroom,” he said.
As the use of tablets and e-readers spreads, more and more students will be coming to campus with digital textbooks, whether their intent was to shrink their book bags or expand their checking accounts. These students can only hope the teachers stay current and let them use the new technology.