The dental schools' use of DVD's is a sudden leap forward. Experts in textbook publishing say it is the first time that digital content has completely replaced books for all students in a school. Still, whether students will embrace an entirely digitized curriculum is an open question. Some digital-textbook experiments have shown that students facing a lot of reading prefer printed books, said Gary Shapiro, senior vice president for intellectual property at Follett, a company that manages college bookstores. Follett, for example, has conducted focus groups to test students' reactions to online or CD versions of textbooks.
Price is another issue.
And coordinators of the project acknowledge that students will have no choice but to buy all the books they might use in four years, instead of picking and choosing. Still, Wayne Loney, a third-year dental student who tested the concept, said he thought that students would accept the cost. If I had to leave for the weekend, all I had to do was just take my Powerbook and fire it up from wherever I was. The software's searching capabilities provided an even more important convenience, Mr. Loney said. If I was looking for a piece of information, all I had to do was type it in, and the software would give me a list of every place that topic came up.