Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

PCC Bookstore offers digital alternative to students

Photos and story by James Hill

PORTLAND, Ore. – This fall the Portland Community College Bookstore will participate in the Universal Digital Textbooks program, providing a cost-saving alternative to printed textbooks. The PCC Bookstore is one of 10 selected test stores across the country to participate in the Universal Textbooks program. Other bookstores include University of Utah, Oregon, Bowling Green State (Kentucky), Princeton (New Jersey), Georgetown (Washington D.C.), Cal State-Fullerton, West Virginia, Louisiana State and Morehead State (Kentucky). "We were chosen because of our established partnership with the program innovator MBS and our demographics," said Laurie Bales, manager of PCC Bookstore. "Currently, PCC has about 10 titles that will be available fall term in the digital format. These titles were selected by MBS and the publishers." The Universal Digital Textbooks program gives students the opportunity to save up to one-third off of the new book price. Plus, it offers the convenience of downloading textbooks in an electronic format. For example, a new book would sell for $100; that same book, used, would sell for $75; and the digital textbook version would sell for about $66, presenting significant up-front savings to the student. There is no physical textbook involved with this product. Students can download the digital textbooks to their computer hard drive, making them portable for laptops. The digital textbooks are in Adobe PDF format and can be viewed by using free Adobe Reader software. And purchasing a digital textbook is easy. The students can buy the Universal Digital Textbooks by using cards (similar to electronic gift cards) where the bookstore cashier activates it by swiping it at the register. The student then can download the digital textbook when they go home by visiting www. Digitaltextbooks.net. The information in the digital textbooks is copyrighted and allows a single download to one computer for a specified number of days. Special software embedded in the books prevent file sharing and copying. Partners include textbook publishers McGraw-Hill Higher Education, Houghton Mifflin Company, John Wiley & Sons, Thomson Learning and SAGE Publications. PCC begins fall term classes on Monday, Sept. 26 at all campuses and centers across its 1,500-square-mile district in northwest Oregon.