E-books

Citation

Maxymuk, J. (2002), "E-books", The Bottom Line, Vol. 15 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/bl.2002.17015aag.001

E-books

E-booksKeywords: Internet, Electronic books, Libraries

"Let's face it, books are yesterday's technology – bulky, environmentally suspect, impermanent, expensive, hard to find, forever out of print, slow to produce, slow to write and slow to read, and a strain on the eye," asserted Eli Noam, professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia University, as part of his keynote address to the Annual Convention of Educom on October 27, 1997 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was later reprinted in Educom Review, Vol. 3 No. 2, and can be found on the Web (http://www.shylibrarian.com/ebooks/articles/noam.htm).

Noam went on to say: "Books will survive, of course, like the radio, of which there are quantitatively more than ever (five per household), but without its past centrality. Books are likely to remain as an entertainment medium, novels for couch, beach and bus – and, of course, where an exquisite presentation is part of the experience, such as for poetry or art, books will endure. But when it comes to the pure informational aspect of books – storing and accessing useful information – the print/paper technology will lose out."

If Noam was correct in his assessment, and I believe that current trends certainly point in that direction, what does this mean for libraries? What are libraries to do about this technological change? How will we continue to thrive?

Definitions

E-books are monographs that are presented in an electronic format. They are distinguished from the traditional bound print-on-paper volumes now sometimes referred to as "tree books". E-books come in two basic varieties: those defined by their hardware and those defined by their software. Those defined by hardware are ones that run on proprietary, expensive, hand-held book readers such as the Rocket e-Book. Readers are roughly the size and weight of hardback books and at this time can hold several book-length e-texts. On the reader, the text is backlit and can be searched, highlighted, and annotated. Additional e-texts can be downloaded from the Internet either through a personal computer or with the e-book reader's internal modem. The second type of e-book, defined by software, runs on a PC with a Web browser connected to the Internet. In this case, the user is connecting to a repository of electronic texts, sometimes for free and sometimes for a fee, to view an e-book. The text may be in basic ASCII format or may be readable through a common free browser plug-in like Adobe Acrobat or through proprietary software.

While some libraries, primarily public ones, are experimenting with the dedicated hardware model, this approach runs counter to the open architecture framework that allowed computers to become so much of a part of our lives in the past 20 years. An interesting perspective on the dedicated hardware model for libraries can be gleaned from the Algonquin Area Public Library's FAQ on e-books (http://www.nslsilus.org.alkhome/faq.html). As the industry's slow pace of growth indicates, neither libraries nor consumers are looking to be locked into an inflexible system for information retrieval. The distributed Net-based model seems a better fit for today and the future.

Overviews

A number of sites provide an overview to the world of e-books on the Web. The most comprehensive is e-bookWeb (http://12.108.175.91/ebookweb/).This site has an e-book primer on the basics of the medium, comparative information on e-book hardware and software, listings of links to new e-books, and news items on the technology and industry. There is also information on writing, designing and selling e-books, as well as an open forum to discuss all aspects of the topic.

Another useful site that brings together related information on e-books is the Crib Sheet on Electronic Books (e-books) (http://skyways.lib.ks.us/central/ebooks/cribsheet.html).This site lists links to a variety of both commercial and public domain providers of e-texts, as well as providers of PC-based e-book reader software, PDA e-book reader software, and dedicated e-book readers. There also is an annotated outline of the benefits and drawbacks of e-books.

A shorter mixed bag is hosted by LibraryHQ.com (http://www.libraryhq.com/ebooks.html). In addition to listings of e-book sources and vendors, users will find the e-book listserv, different discussion forums, and a collection of news articles on the subject as well. The Shy Librarian site offers a thoughtful selection of Web-accessible articles on its ten best articles about e-books and e-publishing (http://www.shylibrarian.com/ebooks/10articles.htm). These articles (14 not ten) branch out and lead the reader to a wealth of resources to explore the feasibility of the technology.

Evaluation: a few great examples

As noted above, the Crib Sheet on Electronic Books discusses both the benefits and drawbacks of e-books. Among the key benefits are that an e-text is easily searchable, the user can input his own reference material, e-books can contain hyperlinks and multimedia, i.e. they can be works with no print equivalent, back listed or out-of-print titles are potentially available, and users have access to thousands of public-domain works that are available free on the Internet. e-books offer libraries some additional possible advantages:

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  we could serve home users with direct access to titles;

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  we could save shelving storage space;

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  our need for weeding would be reduced;

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  we could select materials that quickly become dated such as computing titles, travel guides, career guides and tax guides;

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  we could delay purchases until items are requested by patrons; and

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  e-books would eliminate overdues and check-ins through use of timed, encrypted access.

On the other hand:

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  reading from screens is not as easy on the eye as print on paper;

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  there are too many competing, exclusive formats – industry standards are not in place;

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  copyright and library sharing issues need to be worked out;

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  the price of new electronic titles does not represent much of a discount from paper; and

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  there are costs involved in providing public terminals for extended reading and costs in printing long documents.

Sarah Ormes' e-book primer prepared for EARL (Electronic Access to Resources in Libraries) in the UK (http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/public/earl/issuepapers/ebook.htm) notes additional benefits of e-books. e-books offer libraries the potential to make considerable savings as prices decline. They will not wear out and will not need to be replaced. In the long run, processing costs and acquisition staff time may be reduced. Delivery to users can be instantaneous, and the collection can be expanded beyond the limits of shelf space. Ormes sees potential technical and management problems as the appropriate model is developed. She also foresees lower in-person library use, more automation, and eventual staff cuts along the lines of the banking industry.

The Central Kansas Library that houses the previously quoted Crib Sheet has an extensive site on "Can e-books improve libraries?" (http://skyways.lib.ks.us/central/ebooks/index.html). This page indicates seeing gains for acquisitions, circulation, interlibrary loan and technical services operations with e-books. There are separate pages on the technology in general, as well as on its usability and readability. Different approaches to the technology are compared in tabular format for affordability (http://skyways.lib.ks.us/central/ebooks/affordability.html) and accessibility (http://skyways.lib.ks.us/central/ebooks/accessibility.html). The accessibility table compares such criteria as what texts are available, speed, costs, searching capabilities, reading quality, printing options, and mobility.

The University of Rochester Libraries conducted studies on the feasibility of e-books in various types of libraries and how these electronic works are being used by patrons. These studies are posted on the Electronic Book Evaluation Project page (http://www.rrlc.org/ebook/ebookhome.html). Also available on this page are a Powerpoint overview presentation on e-books and more detailed information on this evaluation project.

Still free

Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.net) is possibly the oldest electronic book repository, dating back to 1971. Of course, this, like almost all free sites, is going to provide the texts of works in the public domain, generally things published before 1923. Gutenberg texts are just that, simple text files of such classics as Shakespeare and Dickens, and there are over 3,500 of them.

Likewise, Bartleby.com (http://www.bartleby.com/) focuses on the "great books" and includes poetry, fiction and reference works in its online holdings. The Perseus Digital Library at Tufts University (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/) focuses especially on Greek and Latin classics, as well as English Renaissance works.

The online books page from the University of Pennsylvania (http://www.digital.library.upenn. edu/books/) provides a search engine to 14,000 free e-books available across the Internet. The user will find texts from the above-noted Project Gutenberg, Bartleby and Perseus, as well as the University of Virginia and many other public repositories.

There are specialized free e-book collections in all fields. For example, in the sciences the National Academy Press's Open Book interface (http://www.nap.edu/) allows users to read electronic versions of their books without charge. Similarly, the US Federal government has made a staggering amount of material available electronically for free over the past several years. Libraries also are increasingly making available through their catalogs a host of electronic reference works that accompanied the purchase of the paper resource.

… and then those fees

Copyrighted works are increasingly available electronically through a variety of services. Some are marketing directly to students and others while bypassing libraries altogether. These businesses use different pricing models. Questia (http://www.questia.com/Index.jsp) uses subscription pricing, ebrary (http://ebrary.com/) uses a pay-per-use set-up, and Contentville (http://www.contentville.com/) discounts the print pricing model. How successful this approach will be is debatable because evidence indicates Web users are not eager to pay for content.

The e-book approach closest to the existing library model is netLibrary (http://www.netlibrary.com/).With netLibrary, the software does not allow more than one person to access a specific book at one time. These files are readable on a PC from home, office or the library itself. Perhaps the most obvious use of netLibrary is purchasing collections where it is hard to stay current in paper – computer books and travel guides for example.

Where things go from here is difficult to say. e-books seem to be ideal for niche publishing of titles of narrow but intense interest. And as long as texts are available electronically they may still turn up in paper. The technology for printing on demand is getting closer to being financially feasible. Replica Books (www.replicabooks.com) works in just this way. It seems a sure bet that the advent of e-books will not lead to less written material.

Comments on this column are welcome and can be sent to maxymuk@crab.rutgers.edu. Or visit my Web page at http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~maxymuk/home/home.html

John MaxymukReference Librarian at the Paul Robeson Library, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ, USA