The advantage that tablets have is portability. Students cannot carry all of the texts and other documents they need. It is too much weight to manage, and if you set your texts down, they are targets for theives. Especially if you have a laptop in the bag with the texts. And imagine if you are in class 40XX, which requires that you pass 20XX and 30XX. At times, you may need to reference material from the previous levels. With the tablets, you can do this, plus get information from the internet to support what you need. Hopefully, a future side benefit of tablets will be the use of interactive media that can help those people who are not as good at theoretical concepts from written text.
Eventually, the big advantage may be the effect on library services. The library is the core of campus life and is an enormous part of the campus. Not only is the main library enormous in size, they often have a depository where books are stored and brought in by request. Plus certain disciples requires that they have their own library to get accredidation. For example the School of Architecture may have a smaller library of its own, only a block from the main library. What if students can check out any book or periodical without leaving their dorm? Instead of several huge buildings that take hundreds of employees, you could cut staff by 75% and have a depository for special texts, and a small office for digital book processing. One big advantage of such a system is that the books never wear out, the one you want is never checked out, and they will not get rid of one to make room for another.
Eventually, the big advantage may be the effect on library services. The library is the core of campus life and is an enormous part of the campus. Not only is the main library enormous in size, they often have a depository where books are stored and brought in by request. Plus certain disciples requires that they have their own library to get accredidation. For example the School of Architecture may have a smaller library of its own, only a block from the main library. What if students can check out any book or periodical without leaving their dorm? Instead of several huge buildings that take hundreds of employees, you could cut staff by 75% and have a depository for special texts, and a small office for digital book processing. One big advantage of such a system is that the books never wear out, the one you want is never checked out, and they will not get rid of one to make room for another.
