Image by Cristian Eslava

I spotted today that a new article on e-book readers had been published in the latest issue of SCONUL Focus: “E-book readers: what are librarians to make of them?” The author looks familiar. I regularly get asked about the potential for these devices (and noted that the discussion is ongoing, e.g. see LIS-E-BOOKS@JISCMAIL.AC.UK yesterday), so I had thought it would be useful to have a single place where many of the main issues and studies could be linked to. And for anyone keeping up with this topic, it seems like a good opportunity to point to some other recent articles.

Reviews and DRM

After all, things move on, and there are new devices which I have hardly had a chance to look at. So this mini-review of newer devices by Justin The Librarian is a good follow-on. I was pleased to see my comments on DRM (Digital Rights Management – defined by me as ways of stopping you from easily using the things you have paid for) echoed by Justin when he mentions the irritations of DRM and the complications it adds to using the devices or transferring books to them. My feeling is that until the DRM goes there won’t be a boom in these devices. And whenever I speak to librarians or consumers, the same views emerge. In a recent article by Rory Cellan-Jones on one of the BBC blogs, “Kindle or iPad: Which will change reading?” the DRM-related comments by readers show it is a major concern for users of these devices. For example:

“I’m not very interested in walled gardens put up by giant corporations trying to corner a market. Not in the case of Apple. Not in the case of Amazon. And I’m not interested in the ‘concept’ that you don’t in fact buy an ebook, you are just buying the right to read it. Wasn’t it Amazon who disappeared the ebook of ’1984′ from all its e-book purchasers? … What might change the game is a reader, that looks and feels pretty much like a book, costs about £9.95, is open (and simple) architecture/operating system…. and when you’ve bought the ebook , its yours, not the property of some megalith corporation. The day some of these people assimilate all of this, then they might have a success on their hands”

This was mirrored by a comment from a contact of mine by email only this morning. The contact had recently tried the Sony PRS-505 book reader and said: “I found it a total faff to install the software, had to download all sorts of rubbish and sign up with Adobe, just to upload a document.” The serendipitous comment gives an honest user’s view, and would need to be considered in the roll-out of any service based on these devices. I can’t resist linking to this as another example of how users perceive the technical barriers DRM places in front of efficient e-book-based library services.

The music industry saw sense eventually: in 2005 Sony had got into hot water for its use of invasive and dangerous DRM (bad old days) – whereas in 2008 Sony caved in and dropped DRM, even from its digital music store. And suddenly people were interested in buying music again. Persuading publishers that this is how people work is not easy: however if it can happen with music then I am optimistic that it can happen with books, and if it does then a whole new world of simple-to-use e-texts could become available for the benefit of students, consumers and libraries. Until then the assessment continues.

E-books and libraries

The section above was about e-book readers: physical devices that allow you to read text on the move, usually in a form that is downloaded onto the device. However there are also the type of e-books which have been around for longer, where the books are read on your PC through a web browser, the books themselves hosted in an online platform. E-books For FE fits this kind of model.

So what about the implications of this form of e-books for libraries? A recent article in the US-based Library Journal summarised some of the issues e-books bring to the table for academic and public libraries: “Libraries, Ebooks, and Competition” By Eric Hellman. As with many technologies the conclusion seems to be that for libraries it could be a threat or an opportunity: a lot will depend on how we use it.

At the CyMAL Libraries for Life Advisory Group meeting on 25th June 2010 Priscilla Dawson and Mark Ludlam of Gower College Swansea delivered the presentation “E-resources in FE: 2010 snapshot”. One of the points made was that many e-books accessed via online platforms are ‘tethered’ i.e. not fully downloadable to a device. I love the phrase ‘tethered’ in this context and hadn’t heard it before, it seems to be a remarkably apt description. They also praised many of the features of the E-books for FE offering: fully searchable; text can be highlighted; notes can be made; pages bookmarked; plus the e-books platform includes features that are useful for those with print-related disablilities such as being able to change background colours, text sizes, and the text to speech facility. Their conclusion seemed to be that the e-books complement (but may not fully replace) existing print stock, an accurate summation of the state of play right now.

Staying on the topic of the advantages and disadvantages of e-books, the JISC National E-books Observatory Project (a precursor to E-books For FE) led to a number of studies. I only got round to reading “E-book use by academic staff and students in UK Universities: focus group report” by Chris Armstrong and Ray Lonsdale recently. For me the most interesting aspect was the inclusion of the perceived pros and cons of reading e-books from the screen as compared to a physical book, which matched many of my own thoughts. The main advantage of e-books tends to be that they are useful for reading short pieces of information rather than extended reading through a whole book. Their search facilities can also enable the quicker finding of key topics the reader is interested in (though possibly divorced of some context). However some of the negative perceptions include:

• still not as familiar and comfortable as printed books
• not as easy to concentrate on books on a screen (e.g. there is the distraction of interface, or the temptation to do other online things such as email or web browsing)
• scanning and browsing is more difficult with e-books (i.e. because you have to scroll up and down as well as navigate through the e-book)
• working with multiple books is perceived to be more difficult on the screen than with physical books
• e-book interfaces (which are in addition to the operating system and browser interfaces) take up a lot of the screen, often squashing the actual book into a small letterbox
• zooming in destroys the page format

The future

So there we have it: a quick tour of some of the current thinking about e-books. They remain a hot topic, and the future of the format will be an interesting one. There is no doubt that e-books will become more important: one of the findings of the recent Eduserv E-book Survey was that “A significant growth in the use of e-books is predicted over the next two years, with 77% of respondents thinking that use of e-books double or more than double”. New tools like Eduserv’s E-book Finder (it works via print ISBN – read about it here) will continue to be developed to help in making purchasing decisions. And maybe some of the classic books of yesteryear will get a new lease of life and become available again in e-editions…

E-books fulfil certain roles brilliantly (distance and 24/7 access, accessibility features), but the format is not yet mature and there are currently caveats that we all need to be aware of.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 15th, 2010 at 10:47 am and is filed under e-book readers, e-books, E-resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.