As you may know, the digital book war between Amazon and Barnes & Noble has been heating up. Last week, Barnes & Noble announced an important move it is making, adding Nook boutiques to its brick and mortar stores across the country.

Today, Barnes & Noble announced its next move, launching NookStudy, a software solution that gives students access to eTextbooks and other digital content and organizational tools for learning. The company also launched a textbook rental service. Barnes & Noble claims it is now the first and only major online retailer giving college students textbooks in new, used, rental, and digital formats.

"As leaders in the college bookselling arena, we aim to deliver college students the greatest choice, flexibility, savings and value when it comes to their textbook, reading and study needs," said Tracey Weber, Executive Vice President, Textbooks and Digital Education for Barnes & Noble.com. "With new, used, rental and digital textbooks, we offer students across the country the ability to choose the formats that are best for them – whether they prefer digital, physical, renting or owning."

"And we’re thrilled to roll out our revolutionary NOOKstudy application to provide higher education students with unprecedented freedom to access their eTextbooks and other resources on their PC or Mac anytime and anywhere to make it easy to study smarter," added Weber.

While no mention was made of any mobile expansion of NookStudy, one can only expect that this will come in the future. The company just launched its Nook Android app last month. Barnes and Noble is clearly very invested in competing with Amazon in eBooks, and more mobile offerings would only make sense, particularly for students.