So Many Textbooks
March 18, 2020 5:17 PM   Subscribe

Cambridge University Press is making all of its textbooks available free online in HTML, until the end of May.
posted by Alensin (21 comments total) 43 users marked this as a favorite
 
Textbook content is read only and cannot be downloaded.

Bwahahahaha.
posted by jedicus at 5:43 PM on March 18, 2020 [12 favorites]


I don't see any CV news center today, but rather than a new post, if you're in the US and don't feel like (more!) reading: Your national parks are *free* during coronavirus, probably for 'at least months'.
posted by Twang at 6:13 PM on March 18, 2020


Sucky UI at least for me. When you click on a Subject you don’t get a list of books under that subject. Instead you get a loooong list of parts of books that fall under that subject.
posted by njohnson23 at 6:26 PM on March 18, 2020 [1 favorite]


On a desktop you can limit the results to just books (why that’s not the default is beyond me). On my phone, at least, the “refine search” button does nothing, but presumably the option would be under there.
posted by jedicus at 6:41 PM on March 18, 2020 [1 favorite]


You can save entire pages including contents in most browsers. There are gotchas, though. Test what you download by taking your computer offline and opening the saved HTML file in a different browser to ensure you're not seeing content that's cached or delivered from the originating site.

Firefox: Best result. The result will be a primary HTML page and a folder containing all images and scripts, so the page will continue to be useful.

Chrome: Similar to Firefox, but clicking on a footnote will prompt the browser to access the originating site.

Safari: Worst result. Saves the entire page as a .webarchive file, which encapsulates the page and its contents. It only opens in Safari and desktop preview (unless third-party tools are used; see the link) and clicking on a footnote will make the browser attempt to return you to the originating site.
posted by at by at 7:19 PM on March 18, 2020 [4 favorites]


Wow, that's fantastic. Forwarded to some autodidact students of mine.
posted by mwalimu at 7:56 PM on March 18, 2020 [1 favorite]


If anyone wants to read my Cambridge UP book on emotions, I'll happily send it to them. That is, if complex analytic philosophy of mind is your thing.
posted by leibniz at 7:58 PM on March 18, 2020 [10 favorites]


Ha, leibniz, I just looked up your book and apparently you cite a paper of mine (from my previous life as an analytic philosopher of emotions). Small world!
posted by Beardman at 8:05 PM on March 18, 2020 [10 favorites]


Metafilter: I just looked up your book and apparently you cite a paper of mine (from my previous life as an analytic philosopher of emotions).
posted by Reverend John at 8:22 PM on March 18, 2020 [15 favorites]


I'd been planning to work through Fong and Spivak's Seven Sketches in Compositionality. An invitation to Applied Category Theory. Maybe now I will.
posted by kandinski at 8:52 PM on March 18, 2020 [1 favorite]


@njohnson23 filter by "Books" and "Only show content I have access to". You still have to view chapter by chapter.
posted by Leon at 9:42 PM on March 18, 2020


I'm happy for those with the patience to flip through these and load and save them chapter by chapter, but for me, this is useless. Knowledge isn't just what you know, it's being able to get back to it later, to not have essential information being something resting in the back of your brain, vulnerable to failure of recall or twisting over time.
posted by JHarris at 1:30 AM on March 19, 2020


Yes, this is a sucky UI, but it does seem possible to navigate, at least on a laptop. You can get from an individual chapter to the book and then theere is a View Book Online option. (I'm looking at Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe.) The View Book button takes me to the Frontmatter. There's a Contents icon (looks like a compass needle) which lists each chapter and you can click on them on by one. I agree the listing of each chapter when you're trying to see what they have is just annoying.

I've suggested some sort of read-along in the post above this one.
posted by paduasoy at 1:52 AM on March 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


Are there any particularly interesting books in this library of free textbooks that you would like to recommend? I'm browsing through the list of what's available (hmm... maybe this book on dreams?), but would be grateful for your recommendations.
posted by Termite at 2:08 AM on March 19, 2020


So, a mother and her small child are walking on the beach, and a giant wave comes and washes the kid out to sea. And the mother falls to her knees and prays, please God, she's all I have... and the next wave washes the kid back onto the beach, unhurt. And the mother gets up, looks at the kid, looks up, and says "well, she had a hat..."

What I'm saying is, are you seriously nitpicking about the UI at this point? I for one welcome anything that will help stem the oncoming flood of mediocre novels that may otherwise occur...
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 3:47 AM on March 19, 2020 [4 favorites]


Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe
Due to performance issues caused by unprecedented demand and reported misuse, we have had to temporarily remove the free access to textbooks. We apologise for the inconvenience caused and are working to address these concerns to reinstate free access as soon as possible.
11.02 GMT
posted by glasseyes at 4:03 AM on March 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


Shame really. I was wondering if the old trick of sending to Print and then opening as a PDF would have worked?
posted by glasseyes at 4:04 AM on March 19, 2020


"Due to performance issues caused by unprecedented demand and reported misuse, we have had to temporarily remove the free access to textbooks. We apologise for the inconvenience caused and are working to address these concerns to reinstate free access as soon as possible."
posted by doctornemo at 6:18 AM on March 19, 2020


Hopefully they'll figure out how to handle the increased demand/server load. The "misuse" part might be harder though.
posted by gwint at 7:56 AM on March 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


Am I doing something wrong? I get only 43 textbooks available to me.
posted by msalt at 1:08 AM on March 20, 2020


"Due to performance issues caused by unprecedented demand and reported misuse, we have had to temporarily remove the free access to textbooks. We apologise for the inconvenience caused and are working to address these concerns to reinstate free access as soon as possible."
posted by cenoxo at 7:47 PM on March 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


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