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Originally Posted by sassanik
I have to say I don't necassarily buy that some of the text books used in college are any better than wikipedia. How do you really know who wrote them and how accurate their information is? Sure in theory they should be knowledgable but in reality? Who knows.
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Generally speaking, nearly every text book has a list of contributing authors. Each of them are usually peer-reviewed and most, if not all text book authors have a degree in the field in which they are writing.
I know a gentleman who wrote an entire text book on Fire Safety (and the codes related to fire safety). He is considered by fire chiefs the US-over as the defacto expert in the field.
The use of his books to be questioned by a student would be comical, simply because they "don't know who he is" I guess.
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I would hope that the information is good in text books, but at times I find that hard to believe when they publishing companies are pushing new editions out as fast as they can.
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I would too - but I know for a fact that few text books are 100% accurate. In fact, in every text book I used as an instructor I discovered more than one error or omission. While this certainly doesn't affect a good teacher's teaching skills or ability to impart knowledge to their students it does show that the proof-readers and editors weren't as "smart as they thought they were"!
Most of the time, the authors DID include the material or had corrections made for the book before it went to publication, but those things weren't included.
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I believe it has to have 60% new material to be a new edition? Have things changed that much in the last few years that a revision of 60% of the information is really needed?
Amy
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I don't know the requirements myself.
But as an open-source text book is created there still has to be a "governing body" to determine when to run a new release of the document (just like in Linux or other open source material).