Online seminar to address business of 'open textbooks'

An online seminar dubbed "Perspectives on Open Textbooks from Two WA Faculty Authors" will take place Nov. 18, at 3.00 p.m. PST. The seminar will look into the business and process of open textbooks.

An "open textbook" is a textbook published on the Internet and licenced under an open licenses (Creative Commons, GNU). These licenses allow people to read online, download, or print the book and to make derivative works based on it and to distribute them. The seminar will be available at the Elluminate website. Everyone is welcome to take a part and no registration or fee is required. In the first part, Professor Robert Beezer from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA, will be talking about the process of the writing an open textbook. Beezer is the author of a mathematics textbook A First Course in Linear Algebra. During the second part of the webinar, Professor David Lippman from the Pierce College Ft Steilacoom in Lakewood, WA, will be talk about his thoughts on openness and collaboration in textbooks. Lippman is the author of the open textbook Math in Society. More details about the seminar are available at the Changes Next Exit blog.