Early thoughts on the handheld e-book

Transcription

1 Early thoughts on the handheld e-book Elisa Sze Elisa Sze is the Collections Coordinator at the Inforum, the information centre at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. In the Fall 2009 Instructional Series held at the Faculty of Information, she taught the workshop Introduction to E-book Readers and E-books, in which participants experimented with the Amazon Kindle and Sony e-readers and shared their experiences with e-books. Abstract E-books and e-book readers continue to gain media attention. Despite the limitations and costs associated with current models of e-book reading devices, academic libraries need to consider how they will meet the potential user demand for e-books. Some public library systems have moved towards a digital rights management model. Two American universities have launched pilot projects to test the feasibility of e-book readers as textbook replacements. However, questions remain regarding how e-books designed primarily for handheld devices can be accommodated at an academic library collections level. While e-books, and the handheld devices for reading them, have received much media attention in the last several years, the concept of e-books is not new. Project Gutenberg, a volunteer-based project to make the text of public domain works freely available to users around the world through the Internet, began in 1971 (Lebert, 2008). In 1998, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) hosted a conference in Gaithersburg, Maryland on the theme of the electronic book, exploring the topic from the point of view of research, technological advances, and economics. Presenters at the conference talked about plans to make e-book devices more portable, more capable of performing the actions that people typically carry out on print books such as bookmarking and annotations and readily available to the average consumer (Luther, 1998). In the same year, NetLibrary, one of the first commercial vendors to sell e-books online, launched its beta Page 1 of 5

2 tests ( Book on the World Wide Web: Issues and trends, 1998). Many technological and format changes have occurred in the eleven years since the NIST conference. Instead of talking about lightweight, handheld e-readers as eventual innovations, retailers now sell such devices alongside notebook computers and netbooks. In Toronto, the occasional commuter can be seen on the subway staring intently at the screen of a Sony Portable Reader System (PRS), or the even smaller display of the iphone or Blackberry. Instead of talking about research and development efforts to produce e-ink, a technology that simulates the clarity and resolution of printed newsprint using electromagnetically charged particles suspended in a liquid carrier (E-ink Corporation, 2009), e- ink is now a reality if one is willing to pay for the high price attached to these devices. In the United States, bookselling giant Amazon no longer sells and distributes only print works; they also sell e-books, sending these instantly to customers handheld device, the Kindle, through wireless transmission. The Amazon Kindle has even managed to capture the attention of daytime talk-show host Oprah (Macmillan, 2009, June 5) and if there is any indication of something going mainstream, an Oprah endorsement might be it. Yet interestingly, for all these advances, the issues that most needed addressing eleven years ago regarding e-books continue to be the same issues that remain unresolved today. The need for interoperability of e-book products across multiple platforms continues to be relevant, if e-books and e-readers are to be successful. As with music file purchasers, consumers who pay for an e-resource expect to be able to enjoy the content on any number of devices of their choice. Not all popular e-readers make this process easy. For instance, books purchased from the Kindle store are primarily licensed for use on the Kindle device alone (Amazon, 2009, February 9). Amazon s licensing agreement terms also dictate that Kindle users not circumvent the data encryption features that protect an e-book purchased for the Kindle. Thus, Kindle users cannot convert files from the proprietary format used by Amazon to file formats read by other e-book devices. Although Amazon s rival, Sony, has taken the opposite approach by selling books in EPUB format, an open XML-based standard that aims to optimize text display across multiple platforms, as well as permitting common file types like DOC and PDF to be read on their device, the e-reader is not yet truly user-friendly. Anyone who has attempted to view a PDF document from a Sony e-reader will know that magnifying the text size only means zooming in on a portion of the page rather than increasing the font size, and that diagrams in two-column PDF documents cannot be magnified. Although tools exist to convert PDF documents into file types that allow for better text flow, some reformatting work is still expected on the end user s part to ensure that line breaks and symbols translate accurately in the new format. The amount of effort that end Page 2 of 5

3 users need to expend on file conversion and reformatting is a major drawback for a device that is purported to be a convenient option to print. Improvements to e-reader technology seem to be plagued by the traditional image of the book, in that e-reader manufacturers attempt to launch devices that not only emulate the look of text on paper, but also recreate the experience of reading a print book. Some e- readers are equipped with a touch screen and stylus to facilitate text annotations (Carnoy, 2009, September 23). Some allow image viewing and audio playback, including read-aloud features that accompany digital text. Even so, most e-readers currently available are expensive for hardware that serves primarily one function text display and that typically displays content in grayscale. At the time of writing, the Kindle with the 6-inch display screen sells for 279 USD. The Sony PRS range in price from USD to USD, depending on model. To date, the Fujitsu Flepia is the only e-reader capable of displaying colour; it entered the Japanese market earlier this year with a hefty price tag of 1000 USD (Carnoy, 2009, March 18). Surprisingly, in the information field, few scholarly papers have been written on the subject of handheld e-readers and their impact on academia. Information on e-book technology frequently comes from online magazines and non-academic sources. As well, although some library science literature cover general surveys of available devices, the design of e-books, or collections of e-books designed for reading on a computer screen, none have looked at how academic libraries might deal with this new generation of the mobile e-book. Two American universities this year launched pilot projects to test the feasibility of Amazon Kindles as textbook replacements (Cliatt, 2009; Case Western Reserve University, 2009) but these projects still focus on the individual consumption of e-books, rather than on academic libraries building and managing e- book collections for handheld devices. Additionally, the terms of use found in the Amazon Kindle license agreement states that Amazon retains the right to access and delete e- books from their customer s Kindle (Amazon, 2009, February 9). As demonstrated by the controversy raised this summer over Amazon s unannounced deletion of George Orwell s 1984 from customers Kindles (Albanesius, 2009), individual users must be active in asserting their right to privacy and intellectual freedom, rather than assume that these rights will be protected for them. Collection librarians have long been interested in the concept of e-books in academia, but with the added dimension of e- books designed specifically for handheld devices, decisions on the treatment of the format are all the more urgently needed. E- books have the inherent advantage of being accessible to remote users around the clock. As well, e-books can potentially be accessed by multiple users simultaneously. If handheld e- book devices do take off in popularity, users expectations of anytime, anywhere access will only be heightened. Page 3 of 5

4 Collection librarians are also struggling with the following questions. How do academic libraries negotiate fair licensing agreements with publishers and vendors for e-books that users expect to access in this way, without being penalized by artificially high prices determined on the basis of system size or number of FTEs? Should academic libraries follow the model set up by a few North American public library systems that have partnered with corporations like Overdrive (2009) to checkout and discharge e-books, restricting the number of concurrent users of particular e-book copies? What can academic libraries do to ensure that the e-books they have licensed are archived, or at the very least, remain perpetually accessible without paying artificially fixed prices? Do academic libraries purchase and circulate e-readers for their users? Can academic libraries make e- readers work with currently existing open access e-collections? Aside from the possibility of remote and simultaneous access, much potential in the e-book format remains to be tapped. Some innovators already believe that the e-book need not be locked into imitating the physical book, when it can deliver information in ways that printed text cannot. Vook, a recently launched online product, attempts to move beyond the limitations of the printed book by bringing together online reading and multimedia. Selections currently published on Vook include a romance novella by Jude Devereaux and a thriller by Richard Doetsch. Original videos play out key scenes within the story (Thurrell, 2009). If Vook proves to enhance the enjoyment of leisure reading, the application to academic literature may well be worth exploring. Virtual models of ancient structures or reenactments of key battle scenes could be embedded into undergraduate level history textbooks, as could moving images of chemical or anatomical structures in medical textbooks. Can an affordable consumer mobile device be designed to support such e-book enhancements? Because carriers, platforms and formats become obsolete, long-term considerations will need to include considerations over how content might be migrated to newer platforms and devices without sacrificing functionality. Judging from the amount of popular literature that has been generated on the topic of e-books and e-book readers, it is unlikely that e- books as a topic will disappear soon. Despite limitations with current offerings of e-books and e-readers, they are nonetheless being used. As such, academic libraries need to develop a strategy to select, acquire, maintain, and preserve e-books, and determine how they will offer e-books to users for the long term. Page 4 of 5

5 References Albanesius, C. (2009, October 2). Amazon settles 1984 suit. PC Magazine. Retrieved from 94,00.asp. Amazon. (2009, February 9). Amazon Kindle: License agreement and terms of use. Retrieved from Amazon Web site: isplay.html?ie=utf8&nodeid= Book on the World Wide Web: Issues and trends. (1998). Online Libraries & Microcomputers, 16(6-7). Retrieved from Factiva database. Carnoy, D. (2009, March 18). Fujitsu e-book reader makes Kindle look cheap. CNET News. Retrieved from Carnoy, D. (2009, September 23). IRex unveils new wireless e-book reader. CNET News. Retrieved from Case Western Reserve University. (n.d.). Amazon Kindle DX pilot project at Case Western Reserve University. Retrieved October 8, 2009 from Case Western Reserve University - Instruction Technology and Academic Computing Web site: ml. Cliatt, C. (2009, May 6). OIT tests Amazon s Kindle e-reader in sustainability effort. Retrieved from News at Princeton Web site: /S24/16/27G94/index.xml?section=topstories. E-ink Corporation. (2009). E-ink: Electronic paper displays How it works. Retrieved October 7, 2009 from E-Ink Corporation Web site: html. Lebert, M. (2008). Project Gutenberg ( ). Retrieved from /pg27045.html. Luther, J. (1998). Electronic book 98: Turning a new page in knowledge management: NIST conference. Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services, 23(2), Macmillan, D. (2009, June 5). Oprah: Tech s latest trendsetter. Business Week Online. Retrieved from Factiva database. Overdrive homepage. (n.d.) Retrieved October 8, 2009 from Overdrive Web site: p. Thurrell, M. (2009, October 1). Vook the web browser. Vook: the Blog. [Web log message]. Retrieved from Page 5 of 5