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Kathleen Schreurs, a recent MI grad from the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, jumped straight into the startup fray at Symtext.  As Content and Project Manager, her portfolio includes digital asset management, project management, training, and now, blogging.

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I have always been a student; since kindergarten ’student’ has been part of my identity and I have been happy to have it so. In June, I graduated. This is the first September in my memory that I have not returned to classes. I admit that it feels slightly odd, like I am constantly forgetting to do something.  Despite that slight nagging feeling, I am excited to be out of school and putting my knowledge to use but I still see everything from a student’s point of view. I just can’t get the ’student view’ out of my head yet. Happily, this identity lag allows me to bring the students’ perspective to topics surrounding e-textbooks.

For students having a good memory is important and often corresponds with good grades; it helps them pass their exams, write essays, and retain and apply what they learn.  I remember shuffling through stacks of notes and thumbing through hundreds of pages to locate a piece of the text I knew I possessed…somewhere. It was almost always a time consuming process and always very frustrating. If only I could remember where that quote was; if only my notes and text were search-able. Enter e-textbooks! Suddenly, students don’t need to remember where a quote is because they have an e-memory to recall that information for them.

A recent article in Library Journal Online reveals the benefits of the e-Memory revolution:

“We are on the cusp of an era in which, if you choose, you can create e-memories of everything, forget nothing, and keep them in your own personal archive. You can have what we refer to as Total Recall.”

The article refers to all aspects of cultural memory, encompassed in the term “Total Recall”,  including audio, video, imaged, and textual memory which can easily be stored, organized, and perhaps most importantly, retrieved. Take for example, the search-ability of e-textbooks. Imagine not thumbing through pages, but simply typing your criteria into a search-able text and having that criteria retrieved from any and all books you have read. With e-textbooks students can have instant recall and permanent memory. Combine this with the possibility to makes notes on pages, chapters, and highlighted portions of text, and students can have an e-archive of all their thoughts. Further, these thoughts can then exist in perpetuity along with a multitude of thoughts and perspectives from other students and professors that simultaneously exist as part of the text through comments and annotations.

The Library Journal Online:

“E-texts will have many advantages, but an overlooked point is that they will put computing power into the hands of students, enabling them to create their own learning e-memories.”

Through comments and annotations students can combine their thoughts with the ideas of others as part of a constantly evolving e-memory which they can then draw from an add to throughout their lives.

Students are known to look for tools to ease their workload and aid in educational pursuits. This article provides yet another reason e-textbooks are the way of the future: with e-textbooks students have the ability to recall the information they have learned at any time which will undoubtedly increase their learning potential and make their lives a whole lot easier.

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