Officials at Northwest Missouri State University have announced plans to make the school one of the first if not the first school in the country to go all-digital with its textbooks. An article on a trade website for the National Association of College Stores, written by Dan Pender, reports that the school has been testing Sony E-Readers since last fall with a group of 200 students, who had lots of complaints. “Conceptually they liked it, but the device had limitations,” according to Paul Klute, a spokesman for the university president. “It was mainly lots of minor things. It had a blink when the page refreshed and it didn’t lend itself to the way students study: they want to bounce around, skip pages, highlight, and underline.” But Klute says Sony worked with the school to address those issues in its newest model, so the school has decided to go ahead with the project. Interestingly enough, the program may not mean the end of the campus bookstore: “At present, NMSU students rent their print textbooks from the school,” reports Pendel. “The on-campus college store, Barnes & Noble Bearcat Bookstore, is mainly an apparel retailer, offering some additional books to supplement the rentals. The store is, however, working with campus officials to make the campus all-digital.”

So why is the school doing this? The only reason cited is that it might turn out to be cheaper, although administrators don’t sound very confident about that — Pender reports the school hopes to keep costs “at or below ” what students are paying now for traditional textbooks.