With two or three competing models for a particular idea, Lue says the current challenge for textbook authors is to assess the entire spectrum of materials and choose which examples best illustrate fundamental principles. “We have to help instructors use the material most effectively, rather than just handing it over,” says Lue.

For HHMI investigator Matthew Scott, a particularly compelling part of textbook authorship is distinguishing discoveries that are of enduring value from those that are merely in vogue.

“You don’t want to put in too many of the latest hot things that are perhaps wrong or less important than they may seem at the moment,” he says. “Yet you want the book to seem up to date, so you’re doing a balancing act.”

Oxford University Press’s Jonathan Crowe says with the ability to change digital content at will, it will be “fascinating” to see whether authors will be constantly updating things to keep pace with the latest discoveries, or stick to the old way of curating.

“In theory, their task could never end,” he says. “The molecular biology team I work with, at least they’ve got a couple of years without me breathing down their necks. I could be on them every month, and it could never stop.”

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He suspects there will be incremental updates rather than constant ones, and then new editions every three years. For more topical matters, “that’s where things like social networking could come in,” says Crowe. “You could have a Twitter feed associated with the book if a discovery comes in. Anybody who’s following that feed will see it has happened and then go have a look at this journal for this particular advance.” And then when the new version of the textbook comes along, “the authors can build it into the narrative.”

The Best of Both

So while authors and educators wend their way through the digital morass, will the paper textbook soon go the way of cave drawings and illuminated manuscripts? Or will students cling to the textbook because sitting in the grass and highlighting a page with a yellow marker is just simpler than highlighting electronically?

The best print textbooks, especially for upper-level courses, will probably not go away as fast as people anticipate, says Pendergast. “It’s still a pretty functional tool.”

“When you’re trying to learn math or chemistry or physics, and this stuff is really hard, I think people use the textbook as a life vest. It’s insurance—you grab onto it and hope that it’s going to provide the explanation you need to understand the concepts you’re trying to learn.”

The advantage of digital content, she says, is that it personalizes the learning experience, so students can process information at their own pace and use visuals to enhance their understanding of the material.

“Instead of reading 20 pages on the Civil War or Civil Rights Movement, they could go on a website and see a video of Martin Luther King,” she says. “They could see and read original text from MLK and JFK and get a much more visual experience over time.”

The iPad is a physical object, too—and one that weighs a mere 1.35 pounds, making the textbook seem more like a millstone than a life vest. In the second edition of Molecular Biology: Principles and Practice, Doudna hopes to fuse the best of print and digital. “I doubt there will be less text, frankly, because we’ve found that faculty want quite a high level of discussion about experimental findings.

“But expanding into other kinds of media like the iPad will allow us to give people more options. We could pick any sort of topic in molecular biology and have an application that would allow students to get real-time information about that concept. We could have discussions with practicing scientists kept very up to date with interviews as new discoveries are made.

“Or it could be a hands-on demonstration of the discovery, showing them data and walking them through how one does the experiment.”

Doudna hopes to have all that out in three years. “We just had our booksigning party [for the first edition], and our publisher said, ‘Don’t relax. In a few months I’m going to be calling you.’”

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