[CATO] Pressbooks, LibreTexts, and STEM support

[Hanscom, Michael]

Hi all,

I heard about something yesterday while speaking with one of our Math faculty that seemed like it was worth asking all of you about.

I'm told that when creating OER material, Pressbooks is the preferred platform platform (and SBCTC-subsidized, which is part of why I figured CATO would be a good place to start asking about this), and apparently works really well for humanities courses. However, our STEM faculty are more likely to use LibreTexts, in large part because (at least as of last year), Pressbooks content required a $500-per-book additional fee for a math/science package to properly support STEM content. Do any of you know if this is still the case, or if there is more information on that that I could dig into?

I'm not terribly familiar with Pressbooks yet, but while looking at their plan feature comparison page, I saw that MathJax is now included with all their plans, even their free trial, so wondered if perhaps that's a new change and the $500-per-book addition isn't as necessary anymore? However, I also see that further down in the list, they note that part of the paid plans is the ability to "activate premium plugins (e.g. TablePress, QuickLaTeX)", which made me think that maybe this $500 additional fee was one of the premium plugins and would still be necessary.

Any information or pointers on whether Pressbook's STEM support has improved or whether we should stick with LibreTexts would be appreciated.

Thanks all!

Michael Hanscom (he/him), Accessible Technology Program Manager, Highline College
mhanscom at highline.edu<mailto:mhanscom at highline.edu> | Building 25-516 | 206.592.3383
Accessible Technology Zoom Lobby: W 3:30-4:15pm/Th 3-3:45pm https://highline.zoom.us/my/mhanscom
Access Services: 206.592.3857 | access at highline.edu<mailto:access at highline.edu> | https://access.highline.edu<https://access.highline.edu/>

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