E-books
By Matt McCaw and Florian Diekmann
What is an e-book?
According to Bennett and Landoni (2005), in general terms a book or document presents a medium for communicating information which among other items includes facts, teaching material, discursive writing and fiction. An e-book, therefore, is its digital equivalent, i.e., a medium where information is organized and structured so that it can be presented to the reader in order to facilitate consultation [1]. The meaning of the term e-book, therefore, can range from electronic copies of a book’s printed form, to marked up text and figures that enhance the content, to electronic content that offers online services beyond those of an individual book [2].
The Oxford English Dictionary defines an e-books as both “a hand-held electronic device on which the text of a book can be read. Also: a book whose text is available in an electronic format for reading on such a device or on a computer screen; (occas.) a book whose text is available only or primarily on the Internet”.
Wikipedia defines an e-book as “an electronic (or digital) version of a book. The term is used ambiguously to refer to either an individual work in a digital format, or a hardware device used to read books in digital format. Some users deprecate the second meaning in favor of the more precise ‘e-book device’.
Many e-books are indeed digitized versions of printed books with enhanced functionality regarding linking and searching features. Other e-books are ‘born digital’. E-books are considered important digital information sources in academic libraries where e-book collections are built around web-accessible titles. Since e-books work with libraries' and patrons' desktop computers, laptops, and other existing hardware such as smart phones and PDA’s, they provide for a logically fit with other electronic collections of academic libraries (e.g., electronic journals) [4].
Background
Early History
The wide gulf between e-books and web-based material is a fairly recent one. The relegation of e-books to the margins of electronic media happened as a result of the growth of a type of media unique to the web. However, before innovations such as blogs, email, websites and wikis people had a very different idea of what the internet would be, and e-books were at the center. As early as the late 1960s and 1970s, long before personal computers became widespread, early pioneers of computing were pondering electronic book publishing. According to Ardito (2000), a postgraduate student at Utah State University, Alan Kay developed the concept of the first e-book in a conceptual device he called ‘Dynabook’. Kay's Dynabook would be a portable, interactive personal computer, featuring a flat panel display and wireless communications capabilities. It would principally used to electronically access and use printed materials. Kay further continued his work during his career as a researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.
Another early pioneer of the e-book was Andries van Dam, who is today a Professor of Computer Science at Brown University. Van Dam is widely credited for coining the term “electronic book” [5]. In the late 1960s, Van Dam led a team that developed the first working hypertext system called “The Hypertext Editing System”. The hypertext editing system ran in 128 K memory on an IBM/360 mainframe computer. IBM later sold the system to NASA where it was used to produce documentation for the Apollo space program.
The integration of e-books into the worldwideweb began when computer pioneer Michael Hart was given $100 million worth of time on a Xerox Sigma V computer by the Materials Research Lab at the University of Illinois. At first he was unsure exactly what to do with that amount of computer time. However, he recalls that one hour and 47 minutes later he announced to his partners that "the greatest value created by computers would not be computing, but would be the storage, retrieval, and searching of what was stored in our libraries." Hart then typed out The Declaration of Independence and saved the document, creating what is considered the first e-book. Today Project Gutenberg is the first and still among the largest collections of free electronic books, or e-books. 25,000 free e-books are available directly from Project Gutenberg while 100,000 more texts are available through Gutenberg's affiliates and partners [5].
Michael Hart, pioneer of the e-book
Subsequent efforts to convert traditional printed books to digital media all followed in Hart's footsteps, and he had a wide influence on the early internet, helping to create the early paradigm of the internet as the digital equivalent of a library holding the digital equivalent of printed volumes. In the two decades that followed book publishing and the internet operated in lock-step. The internet became a home for romance novels, science fiction, trade magazines and any other number of niche publications which had difficulty penetrating the traditional world of publishing [6]. The first websites were much like books or magazines converted to html. However, the web evolved and developed its own style which was heavily dependent on graphics, images and design with smaller amounts of text. The internet became a way to deliver packages of text in the form of emails and documents. The initial enthusiasm that many of the web's pioneers had for electronic books waned as it became apparent that people were not interested in reading a book on a computer screen. In 1994 novelist Annie Proulx seemed to speak for all skeptics and book lovers when she said that "Nobody is going to sit down and read a novel on a twitchy little screen. Ever" [7].
Early E-book Readers
During the 1990s massive amounts of innovation and investment were fueled by wild speculation about the possibilities of the internet. The public imagination was captured by predictions of a world where anything could be done with the internet. E-book developers, who had become aware that the failure of e-books was related to the limitations of computer monitors, began serious work on an electronic 'reader', a hand-held device designed specifically for reading books converted to electronic format. The first such device was the Rocket eBook. Introduced in 1998, the Rocket eBook had 106 dpi or 480 x 320 pixels on a 4.5 x 3 inch touch screen [8]. The device was both groundbreaking and influential, and all readers produced since have been influenced by its design and software. However, the device was very difficult to read and didn't offer users much that traditional books couldn't do. Sales were low and today it is virtually impossible to find anyone who read a book on a Rocket eBook. Similar readers were released immediately after. Among them were Franklin eBook Man, Gemstar and the Handera [9]. All of these readers had similar problems. Developers and marketers, unwilling to admit defeat, reasoned that the digitization of books was proceeding, albeit slowly, and it was only a matter of time until books were digitized.
The Rocket eBook [8]
The Dot-Com Crash
The failures of early e-book readers presaged many of the wider problems of what is now known as the Internet Bubble. Developers in the 1990s had been intoxicated by visions of a world where everything that could be done on a computer should be and would be. From 2000 to 2001 a series of economic collapses and lost fortunes put to rest the notion that any human activity could necessarily be done better on a computer. Contrary to the predictions of internet gurus in California's silicone valley, 'brick and mortar' stores were being built in higher numbers than ever, movie theatres were as popular as ever, television was still king in American living rooms and libraries still checked out thousands of traditional books. E-books were largely shelved in the years that followed and their design and sales were considered hallmarks of the failures of the internet bubble [10].
The Next Generation
Software developers looking back on the failures of the first generation of e-books reasoned that one of the reason that these devices failed were because they depended on traditional electronic screens. The technology running the Rocket eBook, for example, was almost identical to that running Nintendo's first Game Boy. The problem, developers reasoned, was that these readers had relied on images which had low resolution and were backlit, in effect showering the readers eyes with light. Readers needed a technology that relied on stable, sharp images which were viewed with existing light, like a traditional book. However, by 2006 advancements in electronic paper again raised the hope that an e-book could offer what a book can. Electronic paper is designed to mimic the appearance of ordinary ink and paper. It is not backlit, instead relying on reflected light just like an ordinary book. It can hold an image without drawing electricity. A variety of new readers were released, all banking on the promise of e-paper. The most successful reader thus far has been the Amazon Kindle. Others include the Cybook, the Sony Reader and the Readius. The Kindle was released in November of 2007. It has a resolution of 600×800 pixels, comprising a total of 167 ppi. The arrival of the Kindle has again raised the hopes, and fears, that books could truly become digital.
The Amazon Kindle
E-books & Public Libraries
Public libraries almost completely lost interest in e-book technology after the devices nearly disappeared in 2001. However, news of recent improvements in technology has again caught the attention of public libraries. In a relatively short amount of time more than half of the public libraries in mid- to large-sized cities now carry e-books in some form. However, adopting such a non-conventional device in libraries has raised a number of questions.
Those who have most enthusiastically championed e-books have spoken about their space-saving merits. However, seasoned librarians can remember the space-saving merits of microfiche, the last technology that promised to shrink an entire library to a single shelf. Today plenty of librarians can't figure out what to do with those bulky racks of microfiche.
Other libraries have discussed cost issues. With the new generation of readers costing between $300 and $400 it seems infeasible to provide a wide community of patrons with access. The solution seems to be to either allow patrons to use readers inside the library or to invest money in providing e-book materials to patrons who already have readers. The first option seems pointless. A patron who already dismissed the idea of reading a book on a computer screen might not be very interested in using a reader in a library filled with traditional books. The second option raises issues of fairness and availability and threatens to widen the digital divide that libraries are charged with narrowing. Why should libraries invest in digital resources that only a limited number of patrons can afford to use?Jegg Rutenbeck argues inargues that this approach threatens to "separate the digital haves from the digital have not’s"[13]. And there's no promise that the current e-book bubble won't burst just as the last two did, leaving libraries with an expensive collection of digital material to store with the microfiche, the beta tapes and the HD DVDs.
E-books & Academic Libraries
E-books are being acquired by many academic libraries and their consortia. The accepted view by many is that - unlike in public libraries - e-books are set to become standard resources in academic libraries where students and researchers around the world are expect to find digital information sources to support their studies [11].
In academic libraries, e-books typically fall in one of these categories:
- Textbooks containing text with embedded links to additional contents. Many publishers are making their printed textbooks available as e-books, although not all academic libraries are quick to fully embrace e-textbooks yet;
- Multimedia books that contain sound and images and additional digital content. These types of e-books are particularly useful for students in engineering, life and health sciences and similar disciplines. Multimedia boo are usually ‘born digital’ and specifically produced for the e-book market. Springer, for example, has currently over 25,000 e-book titles available that largely fall into this category;
- Reference books such as dictionaries and encyclopedias;
- Directories that need frequent updating;
- Digitized versions of print books. This often includes out-of-print books and books without copyright restriction.
The current academic e-book market is complex and being influenced by a number of factors, including the author’s ability to enhance the content, the rethinking of the entire publishing supply chain, and the use of the e-book format with reading devices [2]. Algenio and Thompson-Young (2005) point to two factors currently influencing the e-book market: (1) the music industry’s reaction to shareware, and (2) the slightly more mature e-journal market. Publishers are concerned about the possibility that e-books could be disseminated electronically to users without payment, when e-books are not protected with rights management software. This requires publishers to invest into computer programming and hardware, or pay for these services from an aggregator or other third party. An aggregator may successfully license publishers’ e-book contents into exclusive agreements, ensuring that libraries must gain access to the aggregator’s e-book platform to access the desired content. While e-book business models will continue to evolve, general trends can be described. The most common business models includes one e-book/one user, fees for simultaneous users, free with print purchases, and annual fees based on a library or institution’s characteristics. These models typically are tailored to any given library, or library consortia [2].
However, libraries often expect unlimited uses for their electronic resources and prefer these models. E-books.com and ebrary.com, for example, permits multiple users to simultaneously view one e-book. Certain types of e-books such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, and directories are often freely accessed online by libraries that purchase the print versions. Other categories including bibliographies, abstracting and index guides, citation indexes, dictionaries, product catalogs, maintenance manuals that benefit from frequent content updates have also succeeded online. Publishers often use the annual fee model for these evolving monographs. Fees are usually based on institutional characteristics such as FTE or degrees granted, library characteristics such as Carnegie classifications, and/or a multiple library consortia discounts. Since libraries recognize the benefits of up-to-date content they are often willing to follow an annual fee model.
Opportunities for E-books
E-books are easy to use for people with physical disabilities, that do not have access to the library building or for those with visual disabilities as screen-reading/text enlarging software can be used with the digital text [11].
E-books that are integrated in the library catalog allow for higher usage and visibility of content. Searching for specific information (using keyword searches for example) in large volumes of text allows for dramatic increases in convenience and time savings and essentially turns any text into a reference book due to higher versatility. It also allows for novel approaches in research such as conducting word searches for computer-counted occurrences to track the history of language and cultures that were not possible before [5]. Links, graphics, and sound embedded in texts provide additional resources of information unknown to a print book.
E-books do not require expensive shelve space and are at no risk of being damaged or stolen. Electronic archives, for example, allow for preservation of historical print texts in jeopardy of disintegrating.
Because there is no physical inventory, electronic books do not incur shipping and handling costs and because they can be printed or downloaded on demand, a publisher does not need to worry about running out of stock. Also, publishers can update e-books easily and frequently at minimal costs.
Publishing electronic books has special appeal to authors. Authors have better control over content, marketing and distribution. It is also easier to retain copyright ownership and directly manage the financial aspects associated with e-publishing. Eventually, authors will use the Web as a direct publishing medium limiting the need for commercial publishers [5].
Resistance to E-books
However, there is a resistance to electronic books that seems to extend beyond the normal logistics of switching to a new technology. While innovations such as email, mp3s, web-based shopping or even the telephone and cable television have all been greeted with enthusiasm, e-books have constantly been met with skepticism, lack of interest or outright fear and hostility. Reading and publishing seem to be the one area of daily life which people can do electronically but will not. Jeff Bezos explained this curious gap in our digital lives that motivated him to create the Kindle: "Music and Video have been digital for a long time, and short-form reading has been digitized, beginning with the early Web. But long-form reading really hasn't." Why are people so loathe to use e-books? Why are they a constant source of fear and anxiety for many members of the reading public? Or perhaps we should ask what are the limitations and risks of adopting e-books as a our principle means of publishing.
Technological limitations: A book is a physical object. The words printed on the page are made of real ink. The text of an eBook must always be a visual representation of printed words. Therefore, there is always at least some gap in the visual quality of an eBook, and in an activity which demands as much of the eyes that serious reading does this gap can mean the difference between finishing a book or putting it down and watching the television. In addition, many users in academic libraries prefer to have several traditional books accessible on their desk at any one time. The nature e-books make simultaneously accessing a number of texts difficult [11].The six-hundred year-old technology of printable type has thus far proved itself to be superior in this respect.
Bibliophilia: People have a love for printed volumes that they do not seem to have for electronic objects. Books are venerated and collected. Museums and libraries take pride in their oldest and most significant books. The printed word is often seen as the basis of our civilization, and destroying books is an act that is often seen as the equivalent of attacking that civilation. Electronic appliances, which even the best readers are, have not managed to capture people's hearts. Few people collect twenty year old computers or forty year old calculators. Once a computer is out of date its owners are usually happy to see it taken away to a landfill. Will the public be willing to see these most cherished physical objects reduced to such banality?
Cost: E-books threaten to widen the digital divide. An Amazon Kindle costs $400. What if all of the great things that come from books, like civilization itself, are only made available to those who can invest large amounts of money? Our education has been based on the principle that books and what they contain are free and universal, and we present books and literacy to our children as an alternative to materialism and audiovisual stimulation. Is a $400 Kindle a contradiction to this age-old message?
Compatibility: Amazon Kindle will only play titles sold by Amazon for the Kindle. A book purchased for use on a Kindle or a Sony Reader cannot be resold or given away to a friend. What if the universality and longevity of books is replaced by a fragmented world of incompatible programs?
Longevity: No one knows what type of world will exist tomorrow, with what type of software and energy available. Today we can ead Etruscan potshards, Guttenberg's bible or last week's New York Times with nothing more than a lamp. However, e-books, with their reliance on a broad web of energy, technology and highly-educated workers, may not always be usable. In addition, libraries attempting to develop a permanent collection may be forced to use resources on electronic subscriptions that disappear[5]. What if the role of the library as a longstanding receptacle for our cultural heritage is threatened? What if an entire generation's intellectual output becomes inaccessible to future generations?
Privacy: Readers have long treasured the intimate relationship that a book creates between reader and author. Apart from a brief notation on a book's title page, the commercial entity that created a book generally disappears. However, e-books are being created in a new media environment by companies with a new outlook on the relationship between media and users. E-book manufacturers are already discussing offsetting the cost of e-books with advertising. Bill McCoy, e-publishing general manager of Adobe, says "Today it doesn't make sense to put ads in books, because of the unpredictable timing and readership. That changes with digital distribution." The nature of e-books which makes adding revisions and new material so easy means that publishers could constantly add advertisements to e-book material, and the control that e-book publishers have over their texts means that it would be difficult to challenge this. In addition, e-book creators are discussing creating online communities attached to books through the use of e-book technology. Readers will read in public. Writers will write in public. An intellectual public already exhausted with the concoctions of global media enterprises is alarmed at the prospect of literature operating with a cable news paradigm. Should we surrender a thing that has been so fundamental a part of our cultural development to an industry that has so far proved itself to be such an irresponsible handler of our intellectual life?
Selected Links
ebrary
ebrary is a leading e-content services and technology provider that has been serving the library, publishing, and corporate markets since 1999. More than 1,200 customers around the world serving more than 12.5 million end-users use the ebrary platform to acquire e-content from leading publishers as well as distribute their own PDF content online. ebrary is privately held and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA.
Springer e-book Collection - The world’s most comprehensive digitized scientific, technical and medical e-book collection. Available through SpringerLink’s IP-enabled eBook gateway libraries and corporations can offer their patrons online access to the most worthwhile books instantly from multiple locations, including library, office, home or wherever they are.
Google Books
Search books online. Some books full text online, others link to check for print availability. Find the perfect book for your purposes and discover new ones that interest you.
2020ok
Directory of free e-books
The Online Books Page
Browse/search by subject, author, or title
Gallica (National Library of France)
Includes several science topics (site in French, text language varies)
National Academies Press
Over 3,000 free books available. Search/browse by topic
World Public Library
Over 75,000 free books available in the Public Access Section.
Wikibooks
Thousands of books that anyone can edit
Free-e-books.net s
Thousands of free e-books available
BookYards.com
Over 13,000 books on a variety of topics
Manybooks.net
Over 16,000 e-books available in a variety of formats, including for portable devices
Google Books Library Project
The Library Project's aim is simple: make it easier for people to find relevant books – specifically, books they wouldn't find any other way such as those that are out of print – while carefully respecting authors' and publishers' copyrights. Our ultimate goal is to work with publishers and libraries to create a comprehensive, searchable, virtual card catalog of all books in all languages that helps users discover new books and publishers discover new readers.
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or e-books. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented e-books in 1971 and continues to inspire the creation of e-books and related technologies today.
Netlibrary (OCLC)
NetLibrary, OCLC's eContent division, launched the e-book category and is fast growing to become the eContent provider of choice for academic, community college, public and many other libraries. It offers easy-to-use functionality with access to multiple formats and best-selling titles from the world's leading publishers.
Oxford Text Archive was founded in 1976 to provide electronic texts for the research and teaching needs of the scholarly community
National e-Books Observatory Project
The national e-books observatory project will assess the impacts, observe behaviors and develop new models to stimulate the e-books market, and do all this in a managed environment.
eBooks on Demand
A new and exciting service, whereby millions of books will be available on request in electronic form. This project, co-funded by the EU, comprises 13 European libraries from 8 countries!
References
1. Bennett, L. and M. Landoni, E-books in academic libraries. The Electronic Library, 2005. 23(1): p. 9-16.
2. Algenio, E. and A. Thompson-Young, Licensing E-Books: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Journal of Library Administration, 2005. 42(3/4): p. 113-128.
3. Armstrong, C., L. Edwards, and R. Lonsdale, Virtually There? E-Books in UK Academic Libraries. Electronic Library and Information Systems, 2002. 36(4): p. 216-227.
4. Dinkelman, A. and K. Stacy-Bates, Accessing E-books through Academic Library Web Sites. College & Research Libraries, 2007. 68(1): p. 45-58.
5. Ardito, S. Electronic Books: To “E” or not to “E”; that is the question. Searcher 2000 [cited 2008 May 4]; Available from: http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/apr00/ardito.htm.
6. Doctorow, C. Ebooks: neither e, nor books. 2004 [cited 2008 May 4]; Available from: http://craphound.com/ebooksneitherenorbooks.txt.
7. Levy, S. The Future of Reading. Newsweek, 2007. 150(22):p. 56-64. [cited 2008 May 5]; Available from: http://www.newsweek.com/id/70983.
8. Feinstein, K. RCA REB1100 eBook Reviewed. 2001 [cited 2008 May 5]; Available from: http://reviews.cnet.com/.
9. Lynch, C. The battle to define the future of the book in the digital world. 2001 [cited 2008 May 5]; Available from: http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_6/lynch/.
10. Voth, S. Equality in e-book access: e-book reading devices in the public library. Library Student Journal 2007 [cited 2008 May 5]; Available from: http://www.librarystudentjournal.org/index.php/lsj/article/view/48/64.
11. Tedd, L., E-books in academic libraries: an international overview. New Review of Academic Librarianship, 2005. 11(1): p. 57-79.
12. Wilson, R., M. Landoni, and F. Gibb, A user-centred approach to e-book design. The Electronic Library, 2002. 20(4): p. 322-330.
13. Rutenbeck, J., The 5 great challenges of the digital age. Library Journal, 2000. 125 (14).
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Matt McCaw & Florian Diekmann, May 2008
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