ITHAKA Invests in Perlego to Make Course Materials Accessible and Affordable

From an ITHAKA Announcement (Full Text):

ITHAKA is investing in Perlego, a company dedicated to making knowledge more accessible. Perlego, founded in 2017, provides students around the world with affordable access to a digital library of over 1 million textbooks. To date, over 500,000 students have used Perlego in their coursework.

Perlego’s impact is meaningful. Studies show that student success improves when students have course materials on the first day of class, yet the cost of textbooks often stands in their way. Perlego helps to solve this problem. The digital library reduces student expenses and makes access to textbooks more convenient.

Additionally, Perlego works with publishers to enable digital access to their textbooks in a way that generates revenue to support their publishing operations while—through affordable, convenient access for students—counteracting student use of pirated content.

“Education has the power to transform people’s lives, and we need to keep removing the obstacles that stand in their way,” said Kevin Guthrie, President of ITHAKA. “We are excited to work alongside Perlego, investing in their work to help students overcome issues of access and affordability and, longer term, seeking ways our organization can collaborate for even greater impact.”

“ITHAKA’s investment in Perlego represents an exciting step towards expanding access to educational resources,” said Gauthier Van Malderen, CEO and Co-Founder of Perlego. “Perlego aligns with ITHAKA’s mission of increasing access to knowledge. We are enthusiastic to start collaborating with ITHAKA in offering students more affordable, comprehensive resources, and embracing new technologies to democratize learning.”

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Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Digital Collections, Interactive Tools, Libraries, News, Publishing