Motivated to save UWM students money on textbooks, UWM Libraries is supporting faculty members who wish to publish “open textbooks.” These books are written by or remixed by UWM authors, have Creative Commons licenses, and are made available free or low-cost to UWM students and others through digital or print versions.
In August, Susan McRoy, professor and department chair, Computer Science, became the third UWM faculty member to use this library’s service with the publication of “Principles of Natural Language Processing,” a 264-page overview of the discipline of designing and using computer programs to analyze or generate human language.
About 40 UWM students annually take a class on natural language processing. McRoy says that the leading book on the topic costs $165 ($55 for paperback) and is over 1,000 pages, which can be overwhelming.
“I know what our students need to learn and will read,” she says. “My goal was to write a succinct book that presumes only knowledge of computing with data structures and to make the material accessible to students and the general public, including working computer science professionals who want to build their skills.”
For assistance with an open textbooks, please contact Kristin Miller Woodward, teaching and learning team lead at UWM Libraries, at kristinw@wm.edu.
Click here to read McRoy’s book, free of charge, or buy a paperback version for $26.70; or you can order a print version from most bookstores, such as Barnes & Noble.