407 Indonesian textbooks openly available
Background
Back in May 2007, when I attended the World Book Day in Jakarta, I heard about plans to purchase the copyrights for school textbooks, and make the books freely available, to alleviate the problem of students who could not afford to purchase them. I thought it was a very interesting idea, but hoped that they would also use a Creative Commons or similar open license, and make these available online for anyone around the world to both benefit from them (for example in Malaysia, where their language is very similar to Indonesian), but also crucially to improve upon them.
I later wrote about the official announcement of this plan, about the first copyrights being bought, and on more thoughts about the project. Recently, when I was putting together the slides for my presentation on Open Education around the world, I thought I’d visit this project again and include a slide. That’s when I found out that the first batch of books had already been made available – 407 of them.
Available!
At the website “Buku Sekolah Elektronik” (electronic school books) under the Indonesian Ministry of Education, they have all 407 books available for download. The books range from primary school to high school, and seem to cover all subjects. There is a system for reading books online, and you can also download individual PDFs of each chapter. However, you have to log in to the system, and you have to agree to the following conditions before downloading/viewing (my translation):
The user can download or print files from Buku Sekolah Elektronik, as well as copy and sell, as long as:
1. The copier and/or seller is of Indonesian nationality or is legally settled in Indonesia (it could also mean, is a legal enterprise in Indonesia, I’m not quite sure)
2. You have to mention your identity on the first page of the books that are sold/distributed.
3. The specifications of the text book for sale has to be according to the directions given by the National Minister of Education.
4. The sales price for books that are allowed to be copied for sale must not be higher than the maximum sales price which has been determined by the National Minister of Education.
5. The text book which is copied for sale has to note the sales price on the back cover of the book.
6. The user has to follow the regulations above and any other relevant regulations.
It seems that these conditions only apply to copying and selling the books, not personal use, so I am still allowed to download these, even though I am not an Indonesian citizen. You can also order a CD with all the books for 100,000 Rp (8.4$ USD), including postage within Indonesia. The price falls by 50% if you order more than 100 copies. Interestingly, at another site, run by private individuals, you can download all the books without having to register, or agree to the conditions above, one pdf per book rather than per chapter.
Analysis
It is wonderful that these books are now available. I find it very interesting how textbooks in different countries deliver information, both in terms of content and design/pedagogics, and now I can see how Indonesian textbooks teach about history, math, economics, etc. For comparative educators, this should be a wonderful resource.
I obviously think it would have been better to use a Creative Commons license. I suspect that the main reason they have not done so, is because they want to control printing, to make sure that everyone keeps within a maximum price. However, with a CC Non-Commercial license, they could still have attached conditions to commercial printing (maybe even through CC+), but would have allowed for free non-commercial reuse. The limitation that only Indonesian citizens can reuse it seems unecessary – I don’t think there is any great export of Indonesian textbooks to anywhere else in the world.
But the issue of openness doesn’t stop with the license. It would be wonderful if we could get not only PDFs of these books, but the source files – whether they are InDesign or PageMaker, or even Word .doc files, so that we could translate these to another language, and keep the illustrations. It would be even better if all the text was available in a Wiki, where people could work together on collaboratively improving them (with quality assurance functions, reviews etc). Then, the Indonesian government could really leverage the opening of these books.
Research questions
I sometimes say that I wish I had a lab full of grad students… as a 1st year MA, that’s a weird statement to make, but I come up with so many possible interesting research questions, but I can’t research them all myself. For example, it would be a great example for an economist to look at – how does this scheme work in terms of the stated goal, which is to make textbooks available more cheaply? Would it be better to not have a maximum price, and let competition drive down prices (probably work in Jakarta, but maybe not in a remote island, of which there are many in Indonesia)? How does having access to all these books on a CD change the way teachers select books? Do they ever borrow material from other books to integrate into their teaching?
Even though this project is far from “perfect” from an open purist’s view, it’s still a wonderful initiative, and it will be very exciting to follow how it develops.
Stian
March 29th, 2009 @ 7:37 pm
Thanks a lot for your great attention to our country. Your ideas and suggestions are very wonderful.
I would like to make some comments :
1) You are correct that the terms and conditions are intended for commercial purpose of the books, not for the personal users.
2) So the website is not the single source for the books. You can find many mirrors at some universities across Indonesia in which you don’t need to register yourself etc. Or, you can find it at our BUKU-e LIPI (http://www.buku-e.lipi.go.id) which is also mirroring all of the books but with different perspective. Because BUKU-e LIPI is intended for more general open books related to both science and scientific education.
3) Even the books are open and fully free, all of the contents should and have passed certain standard of quality by BSNP (http://www.bsnp-indonesia.org) who is an independent body. Note : the Minister of National Education in Indonesia now is no longer super body, they must not make any regulation on substances o education system, and just follow the standard determined by BSNP and are responsible for the technical implementations.
4) Your suggestion to make the books to be fully open, including the sources are very nice. However, even now everyone is basically still free to use the whole / part of the books just like the Creative Commons license. Even the teachers are allowed to make their own textbooks based on the part of official textbooks, etc.
Your idea to make a “wiki-like” system is very great. This is of course allowed, but it has not been implemented yet due to technical limitations, especially of the writers who are not always familiar with the internet technology. Technically, the approach has been implemented fully at BUKU-e LIPI.
5) One of the idea behind the open textbook is to eliminate the cheating price created by the publishers and the teachers that was very common phenomena in the past. So, setting the maximum price would prevent it. For the private schools they are free to choose the textbooks. But, for state owned schools, they are allowed to purchase the textbooks which have obtained BSNP’s certificates, it does not matter the books are from the freely available open textbooks or not.
6) At BUKU-e LIPI, as mentioned above, you can find similar open-books with opportunities for the readers to give feedbacks, having discussions with the authors interactively in forum-like approach, not the wiki-like. The sources are also available if the author wish to open it.
The open textbooks with such scale might be the first attempt around the world. We are welcome your encouraging comments… Thx !
May 18th, 2009 @ 12:17 am
This makes me think of the possibilities of making open sources textbooks (or proto-textbooks) for other countries as well. Say people (such as teachers) used a wiki to make a textbook in thrird year math for Kenya. This could serve as a proto-textbook for math in other countries, and one could make the appropriate adaptions, even translations. By focusing on chapters rather than whole textbooks that are supposed to cover the curriculum for one year, it will probably easier for teachers to adapt it to their purpose, and small booklets can easily be made on a chapter or topic basis (i.e., multiplication). Having pictures from other such books could also be very helpful. I don’ need to understand a word of Bahasa Indonesian so make use of one of the nice pictures in the these books!
So, Stian, how about spending a rainy day on making such a wiki? I promise I will contribute by writing something!
Espen
August 27th, 2009 @ 9:18 pm
[...] hand, there is a lot of great material being released “openly” in for example India, Indonesia and China, but none of this material uses an open license, and I would really love if it could. On [...]