BISG Extends Making Information Pay Conference Series with Higher Ed Publishing Program

Industry standards organization Book Industry Study Group (BISG) is expanding its Making Information Pay conference series, held each spring in New York City, with a new half-day live conference. The inaugural event, entitled What College Students Think: Making Information Pay for Higher Ed Publishing, will be held Feb. 9, 2011 at the Yale Club of New York City, and will address ways in which new media is impacting how and where college students are acquiring course materials.

According to BISG, the event will feature perspectives from senior executives at industry-leading companies. "Rather than providing a broad industry perspective, however, this program is being specifically tailored to the needs of higher education executives in acquisitions, development, media, marketing and sales who need to understand the changing needs of the college students using their materials," a press released issued by the organization stated.

"Today's college student is learning through an expanding array of media channels ranging from traditional textbooks to online learning platforms to websites, social media and mobile applications," says Angela Bole, deputy executive director of BISG. "BISG is happy to be able to expand the successful half-day Making Information Pay conference series into a new annual program focusing solely on the higher education marketplace. This new program will take the industry a long way toward understanding how to compete for adoptions in today's world of open source and online educational products."

In addition to speaker presentations, What College Students Think: Making Information Pay for Higher Ed Publishing will feature preliminary findings from BISG's newest research survey, "Student Attitudes Toward Content in Higher Education." Utilizing Bowker's PubTrack Consumer tool for understanding consumer book-buying behavior, this new survey will provide analysis of how students currently enrolled in two-year, four-year and for-profit institutions perceive and use different types of educational materials in their course of study.