Fancy backpacks are not enough to prevent physical injury, professors
introduce e-textbooks.
SALT LAKE CITY, Jan. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a startling new
study, 80 percent of students say they sustained some form of injury from
their textbooks. The study conducted by Zogby on behalf of CafeScribe.com, a
web site that promotes electronic textbooks, comes just as students prepare to
resume school.
Many of the 600 students surveyed reported potentially serious health
issues as the result of buying, reading, carrying, or using a textbook;
including neck pain/strain (53%) and back pain/strain (39%). Nearly half (47%)
suffered eye strain.
"I was surprised," confessed CafeScribe.com CEO Bryce Johnson, who hoped
the study would further explain the human relationship with paper textbooks.
"We wanted to understand why people prefer the physical book experience over
an electronic version to develop a comparable virtual experience," he said.
Concerns about back injuries from heavy backpacks has prompted legislators
in several states -- including New York, New Jersey, California and Wisconsin
-- to seek legal limits on the weight of books students are required to lug to
and from school.
For decades futurists have predicted paper books would give way to
electronic textbooks, whose practical advantages include lower costs, greater
portability, hyperlinked text, and searchability among other benefits.
The CafeScribe.com poll touches on the complexity of our ongoing
relationship with books. Survey questions also revealed students' strong
association between smells and books. CafeScribe.com provides an old-book-
scented scratch and sniff sticker with every e-textbook purchase.
About the poll: The survey carries a +/- 4.1 percentage point margin of
error and was conducted by Zogby International using an online panel
representative of the adult population of the U.S. A total of 591 college
students completed the survey between August 15-21, 2007. For more detail on
the methodology and results, please visit the CafeScribe.com media center.
About CafeScribe
Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, CafeScribe (http://www.cafescribe.com/) is
part of Fourteen40, Inc., a technology company dedicated to helping college
students get better, cheaper textbooks that let them learn more efficiently.
CafeScribe currently carries e-books from higher education publishers Bedford,
Freeman & Worth Publishing Group, Houghton Mifflin Company, Thomson, and
Foundation Press, and is working with a variety of other publishers to make
additional content available.
Media Contact:
David Gerzof, Ashley Biever
617-713-3800
media@cafescribe.com
SOURCE CafeScribe
David Gerzof or Ashley Biever, +1-617-713-3800, media@cafescribe.com
