Yale University Goes e-Book Crazy

In a delightful turn of events, Yale University decided to make large bits of its library holdings available as e-books and e-journals so students may more easily search for relevancy based on the actual text of books and journals instead of only by their abstracts or a publisher's promotional blurp.

That sort of self-sustained effort by Yale is a fine example of self-initiated institutional intellectual prosperity that doesn't mandate the inclusion of an outside, for-profit, enterprise that skews the good intentions of a model program.

If more universities offered e-books and e-journals for use by their students and faculty -- and even the outside world -- we would then begin to even out the inequity in library holdings across the United States and the fount of knowledge that yearns to be free in the world will begin to trickle down into all open minds to be shared with the universe at large.

Open Yale Courses Opens the Floodgates

Well, it happened: Yale University now offers free online courses for anyone interested in learning online.

You can get text notes, listen to audio, or watch the lectures on streaming video:

Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to seven introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.

Open Yale Courses reflects the values of a liberal arts education. Yale's philosophy of teaching and learning begins with the aim of training a broadly based, highly disciplined intellect without specifying in advance how that intellect will be used.

This approach goes beyond the acquisition of facts and concepts to cultivate skills and habits of rigorous, independent thought: the ability to analyze, to ask the next question, and to begin the search for an answer.

This is welcome, incredible, news -- and it begins the assault on lesser-know colleges and universities across the world -- as Yale becomes the first of the big Ivy League schools to move so fully and so dramatically into interactive online teaching.

This step for Yale tests their toe in the online learning water.

When Yale are satisfied, they will begin to offer distance courses for credit.

Then, the slow death begins for local colleges and universities as brick and mortal buildings give way to Yale University Online.

If you could get a Yale education without having to leave the comfort of your bedroom, you'd do it, we'd do it, the world will do it.

We admire Yale for getting this right so fast and for setting a dangerous -- yet brilliant -- stage for the future of advanced education.