Gavin, our fearless activist/smod/colleague!

I happened to be thumbing through my issue of Mouth going from my mailbox inside, and what do I find on page 7? A scathing indictment of VitalBook from Gavin, well-written and lengthy. I don't know if you can count this as a publication if you try for any post-doc work 😉 But way to say your piece and be heard!

True, true. Here is the entire letter, in its original form for those who don't receive Mouth:

"Vitalsource Technologies (VST) seems to enjoy painting a rosy picture and then backing dental students into a corner where their voices can?t be heard.

As a second-year student at the Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health (ASDOH), I was excited when VST plugged their software to our school because I envisioned the products would fulfill the VST tagline and be my ?key to learning in a connected world?. The real results couldn?t be further from the truth.

The simple act of installing and updating the VST software is often burdensome and ladened with error messages. To the dental student it appears that VST is so worried about providing security to their moneymaking product that they completely ignore a simple and effective installation process.

While textbooks undergo a rigorous editing and proofreading process, my electronic texts are riddled with more errors, typos, and misspellings than I have ever before encountered.

VST has done an extremely poor job of explaining that the annual licensing fee I am required to pay ($1,800) doesn?t ?purchase? me any books, but rather allows me to use the books (if I pay the $1,500 annual software fee) for one year. At the end of that period the books are removed from the bookshelf and new ones are installed. VST did, however, do a superb job of highlighting 109 textbooks that I would have available to me my first year?subject ranging from OB/GYN to Gastroenterology to Cardiology to five different anatomy texts. My only problem is that I didn?t open many of those 109 texts, yet the annual licensing fee is directly based on how many texts we have on our electronic bookshelf. In a nutshell, VST benefits financially from loading my bookshelf with as many texts as possible, regardless of whether or not they benefit or supplement my curriculum.

I believe that the VST product has some benefits over traditional texts, however I also believe that the current method of product distribution and fees is unfair to the dental student body. I propose that students either be given an a la carte method of choosing their electronic texts (which would result in students paying only for texts they want to use) or that students be given the choice of purchasing electronic textbooks or traditional textbooks.

My experiences lead me to the following message for future students whose schools utilize VST products: buyers beware. These items are my own opinion and not necessarily the opinion of my fellow classmates. I am curious about the experiences other students have had with Vitalsource Technologies.

Gavin C. Christensen
Vice-President, Class of 2007
Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health"

So..... you actually read the vital source texts???

You'd be surprised how much information is available online for FREE.

great letter gavin.

Arizona has a dental school? When did this happen?

I have never read any of my vital source texts, which makes me mad I have to pay for them. But anyhow, you bring up some excellent points I was unaware of. Hmmmmmmmmm

predentchick said:

I have never read any of my vital source texts, which makes me mad I have to pay for them. But anyhow, you bring up some excellent points I was unaware of. Hmmmmmmmmm

Click to expand...

You have only had 3 weeks of class so far, and you have to remember that every lecture/ppt you have is only because you pay for the rights to that material. Furthermore your UNLV tuition is set in stone and would not change even if our whole school decided to get rid of vitalsource.