Boundless – Open Source Free Textbooks?
A new website has popped up offering an alternative to buying ridiculously expensive college textbooks, completely free. Boundless takes content from all over the Internet (i.e., mostly Wikipedia) and organizes it into chapters based on your textbook’s subject. You just let them know what textbook you need for class and they will create an alternative free version with the same subjects. It won’t be perfect and it won’t have exactly the same information, but it is free and easy to use.
Also included for free are even shorter cliff notes on each chapter, flash cards, ability for you to take notes, quizzes to test your knowledge, and custom study guides.
After two semesters, I quickly learned that textbooks were over-rated and stopped buying them all together, opting instead to go to class and take notes. Having a supplement like Boundless would have helped a lot. It is worth checking out and I hope to see more services like this in the future.
I’m only left with one question: How are they going to make money off of this? Until then, it seems like an awesome service, so go check them out!
I tried boundless, it’s a great resource, but I don’t think it can replace actually having the textbook.