Background

When I first started teaching the IB back in 1982 there were no books written specifically for the IB. For the core, teachers had to find good text books from national systems and for the Applied Chemistry options it was a case of a bit from here and a bit from there. Consequently teachers were very grateful for any list of useful resources. In 1994 one of my colleagues at Atlantic College, Alan Glanville, wrote a book on IB Economics and published it himself as publishers did not think the IB was big enough to be viable (Alan sadly died in 2010 but his son Jake has updated his book). In 1999 Sadru Damji and John Green produced the first Chemistry IB text book which was published by a group of ex-teachers who set up IBID press in Australia specifically to produce IB books. The first mainstream publisher to realise the importance of the IB was Oxford University Press who published my IB Study Guide in 2001. During the past ten years several more IB specific Chemistry books have been published and of course the Internet is now a valuable resource too. I would suggest that all students should have their own copy of at least one of these IB specific Chemistry books but I would also suggest keeping some other good text books in a library that students can easily access (see separate web page). I wrote both the Oxford University Press Study Guide and the Course Companion for the last programme. Many students over the years have bought their own copy of the Study Guide and it has now sold well over 180,000 copies. I agreed with OUP to redo the Study Guide for the new programme but as I now also have this website to write and regularly update, which also covers Nature of Science, TOK, extension material, International-mindedness, practicals etc. etc. as well as all the solid chemistry in far greater detail than a book, I decided to turn down the invitation to re-write the Course Companion for the new programme.