: Re: Can a textbook contain heavy reference to other materials? I find that nearly all college textbooks are self-contained. All of the readings, exercises, and multimedia (e.g. videos on a provided

There are textbooks for homeschooling that do exactly what you are saying. So, I'm pretty sure it isn't illegal or plagiarism. However, homeschoolers are an independent lot -- not representative of the general public. Also, even among homeschoolers the non-self-contained textbooks are used more by the "hard core" homeschoolers (who are becoming more and more of a minority as homeschooling spreads into the general public). Try a web search on homeschool "great books".

The nice thing about the type of textbook you describe is that it is cheap -- assuming the user has access to a good library (which isn't being laid waste by other users). Otherwise, the user has to buy and keep track of lots of books instead of just one. Most people find that annoying and/or troublesome. OTOH, when you're reading "Huck Finn" you only need to carry around one little paperback instead of a gigantic tome that contains 10 novels.

Plus, if the books under study are all out of copyright, then you can get them all for free from the web and put them on an e-reader. That's super convenient.

OTOH, a big advantage to self-contained textbooks is that notes and questions can be put right into the primary material under study. Students like that. It's super convenient.

The best thing would be to have your textbook be an e-book, and have it link to stuff on the web (books, essays, movies, etc.) But you'd have to do that cheaply somehow, because people don't trust that those web links will last for years (therefore your e-book would have low [NO?] resale value). Linking to out-of-copyright stuff is fine. Any links to copyrighted stuff will require usage fees, which will add to the cost of your textbook.

In summary, I think what you are proposing is the wave of the future, but people are still trying to figure out how to do it profitably.

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