P-Booksvs. Ebooks: Are There Education Issues?
Authors:Abram, Stephenstephen.abram@gmail.com Source:MultiMedia & Internet@Schools; Nov/Dec2010, Vol. 17 Issue 6, p13-16, 4p
The article explores the pros and cons of printed books (p-books) and electronic books (e-books) and compares the classroom with the out-of-classroom library use of books. Some of the advantages of p-books include packaging, fonts, the ability to share p-books, easier to read and requires little or no maintenance like updating the software or charging the battery. The advantages of e-booksinclude customizable displays, reading support for e-readers with reading abilities, and wider range of choice and access.
THE PIPELINE
For the first time in my professional life, I see a huge, complex debate about the future of learning, libraries, and content involving more stakeholders than ever before, possibly in history.
IN other columns this year, I have explored the nature of the ebook in school libraries. Looking back, I realized I hadn't actually discussed the pros and cons of the print and electronic formats for books in general. I also didn't exactly focus on the classroom as opposed to the out-of-classroom library use of books. So I'll cover that in this issue. I think we'll start this as a simple list of pros and cons. Note, however, that this list could be out-of-date very quickly due to the rapid development of the e-reader and ebook space and changing regulatory environments and laws. Also note that the ebook experience is quite different on a laptop or PC versus on an e-reader or a smartphone. However, this is how it looks to me at the end of 2010. WHAT'S SO GOOD ABOUT PRINT BOOKS?Look and feel: I've never gotten this benefit to the extent that I hear it from others, but I can't deny it when people say that the feel of a book, its leather cover, and the heft in your hands are like an aphrodisiac to them. Add to this the folks who go wild over the smell of a book and you see what I mean. When we look at learning styles, we must acknowledge that some learners need the touch and smell experience to lock down comprehension and retention. A lot of research supports smell as a major element in memory. Packaging: Print books can be more beautiful. Gold foil or embossing rarely translates well into electronic images. Pages of illustrated books, in particular, are laid out with care. Since most e-readers wrap text to accommodate the standard screen size, the beauty and intention of the layout can be lost. Indeed, this can be particularly egregious when pictures and illustrations are embedded in the text at just the right place or when the form requires it-haiku or concrete poetry specifies the layout as part of the artistic merit of the work. When users change the font size, the issue gets worse. We know that layout can enhance learning by stimulating more than one learning style at a time. Indeed, some ebooks have the advantage of being able to employ sound and motion as well. Fonts: Most e-readers and ebooks allow users to change the font and design choices, which can corrupt the author's or artist's intent. That said, we know from research that reading comprehension, retention, and learning can be enhanced by simple font-size changes. Young readers do better with larger fonts, and teens usually handle denser text with more facility. The PC as a reading device for straight text generally works best for short passages (less than five pages), although e-paper on e-readers seem to have similar results to p-books. Extras: Some ebooks do not include such print book expectations as flyleaves, back covers, author bios, etc. The full print package can have more information and beauty. Many free (out-of-copyright) works provided in ebook packages often degrade cover art to mere title and author typescript-another cultural and historical degradation.
Perhaps this will be surmounted with a new generation of visual artists who mine the opportunities in using animation, 3D, and brighter color palettes. We'll see. Sharing: You can share your print book. You own your copy of the book and can do with it as you choose. One of the joys in life is giving books that you enjoyed to a friend with your comments and hearty recommendation. It can face the limitation of one reader at a time for a single volume. If you don't think people are psychologically connected to their books, just ask any group about their experiences with lending books and their own return policies! People are attached in a very fundamental way (dare we say love) to print books. The initialism "DRM" is becoming a curse word in the emerging technological culture around reading and ebooks. Advertising: I probably don't need to say too much on this point, but just about every other text and entertainment medium is liberally sprinkled with ads-magazines, television, newspapers, radio, etc. Print books have largely escaped this due to their narrow market niche and long usage cycle. With ebooks you can insert ads-concrete and stable or video-that can be timed to the purchase rather than to the publication cycle. Ads can be timely, and you certainly can expect to see them in ebooks very soon. Secondhand books: You can easily lend your print copy to a friend, sell it, donate it to a sale or hospital, or place it in your personal library for future use. Few e-readers support lending or reselling ebooks. There is a market for used textbooks, and textbooks as class sets can be used for many years after the initial acquisition. Safety: It's difficult to contract an electronic virus from a paper book. (I won't comment on the regular kinds of germs in school!) Privacy: You won't be leaving a permanent digital trail of your personal reading habits online for commercial entities to mine, exploit, and contact you-as long as you purchase your print copies at a retailer for cash. Easier to read: The high-contrast typesetting on good paper continues to rank higher in readability. This may change quickly, but e-paper readers have less contrast, and LCD readers such as the iPad are brighter than necessary for text in order to support video and website display. Little or no maintenance: You don't have to update your software or charge your battery, but you do have to store them … and dust them occasionally. You are technologically independent and can read anywhere there is light. Indeed some (maybe most) classrooms are underwired from both an electricity and connectivity viewpoint. All you need to read: You're born with the "equipment" you need to read-sight, ability, and sentience-and your education builds on that. From the point of view of those with challenges, the ebook may offer some bridges to learning that print does not. Become a collector: This may or may not be a benefit, but for most book lovers and collectors I know-including myself-this activity is more like an illness, such as hoarding, than elegant collecting and curation. However, in our profession, it's a beautiful disease. At home, print books can be a visible indication of your taste, culture, education, and status as well as your decorating sensibilities. Few librarians are minimalists on this point. How does one accomplish this with a huge ebook collection? On the other hand, we can continue to refer to books and textbooks for many years. Unfortunately, there are difficulties in telling if the content is still correct or viable. WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF ELECTRONIC BOOKS?Customizable displays: Is the print too small? Make it bigger. You don't like the font? Choose a different one. As my own eyes decline into old age, I can read comfortably by changing the "book" to match my personal needs. Since an ebook is not in fixed form, it can be altered on-the-fly in useful ways to support how you wish to read it. All learners have their preferences, and with read-aloud functionality, we can transfer content and learning experiences beyond simple text literacy. ADA compliance: Not only can some e-readers read the text in a book aloud, it can be done privately via headphones or in a shared way among parent and child or teacher and pupil. This removes boundaries for both sighted and visually impaired readers. In many ways, this can be used to surmount text learning issues. Reading support: Some reading abilities and challenges are enhanced by e-readers. Different learning styles can be supported through the engagement with the more interactive environment of an ebook. Some reading disabilities can be overcome through page and font layout changes or by combining text reading with auditory stimuli.
You have how many books in your bag? Anyone who has ever picked up a kid's book bag or backpack knows what this means. We might be raising a generation of future hunchbacks. An e-reader can contain hundreds, indeed thousands, of books in mere ounces. The same benefit adheres to those who travel on long train, bus, or plane commutes or who vacation with a pile of books to read on the beach. It must be noted that content and experiences related to the mere book can also be loaded or linked. Wider range of choice and access: No brick-and-mortar bookseller can have as many books in stock as an online ebook retailer. With nary a visit to the mall, you can have your desired read in minutes. We should of course remain mindful of the differences between the types of books and their applicability to e-readers. As I have noted in the past, there are different concerns, issues, and opportunities for fiction, nonfiction, reference, textbooks, scholarly works, children's books, etc. Revitalize the past: The digitization efforts for historical collections will result in the creation of a transformational knowledgebase and a restoration of many cultures and thinking. We are entering a new discovery era. Reinvent the book: Whether we ultimately call them books at all, we are seeing new creativity in the reinvention of books where video, animations, and sound can be integrated into the reading experience. We see learning labs, tests, journals, and more being integrated into the book and textbook. All of these experiments may not succeed, but something exciting and innovative is happening here. In addition, we are seeing the publishing and dissemination ecosystem evolve with the addition of new players and lower barriers to entry for brilliant authors, educators, and intellectuals … but also propagandists. It's Green: Yeah, this might be overrated, but probably not. Over time, you'll save hundreds of trees and acres of forest by choosing to read ebooks over print, and more if you do the same for newspapers and magazines. When you delete an ebook you leave no post-consumer waste! Privacy: It's much more difficult for others to see what you're reading in the airport lounge when you're doing it on an e-reader. Then again, you might be losing some of those serendipitous connections with other avid readers. For now, you might find that you're chatting about the reader instead of the book! Social highlighting:Ebooks are just beginning to explore the potential of socially sharing highlighted quotes and passages. Highlighting is a useful activity, especially with nonfiction and for studying. Finding highlighted and useful passages and bookmarks can allow students and researchers to save time and perform better. On another level, this activity can also be social such as the Amazon Kindle page featuring the most highlighted passages of all time (http://kindle.amazon.com/popular_highlights). On the one hand, it's very interesting; on the other, it's invasive. Making and taking notes: This benefits the serious scholar as an opportunity to engage in reading in a better way than creating ink marginalia while leaving, potentially, a digital trail for future scholars and students. For the recreational reader and for book clubs, it again adds a dimension that rises above print. Dictionary function: How awesome is it that you can increase your vocabulary without needing to go to a print or online dictionary and interrupt the process of reading? Just tap on the word, get a definition, and understand the author's intent just that much easier. Limited vocabulary need not be a barrier for readers. Integration with Twitter and Facebook: Some ebook readers have added the ability to share quotes from your reading experience with your "tweeps" and Facebook friends. Add to this the opportunity to share your insights, opinions, and reviews about what you have just read; integration with Amazon or your ebook retailer; or indeed your library, your club, your tribe, LibraryThing, etc., and this may put social reading to the forefront in ways unheard of since Bloomsbury. You can also share with your class. Search: You can't make a list of what ebooks do better than print without considering search on many dimensions. You can search inside your work-for characters, back stories, concordance, index and contents entries, free text, and more. As a study aid or as part of your exploration of themes over series such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Orwell's works, or the books of the Bible, readers can explore to an extent not possible in print-and with a speed that any wizard of yore would consider black magic. It is extended learning on steroids. Navigation: Flipping through a print book feels intuitive to us because we've grown up with print as it is now. That comfort is merely our experience. We didn't grow up with scrolls, and they don't feel as comfortable-indeed, they feel a bit nostalgic and antique. Comfort factors will change with ebooks as experience continues with e-readers and the format or as a new generation adopts them en masse. The clumsy feeling with ebooks today will gradually subside for most, just as other technologies that have entered the mainstream. Citation support: It's a wonderful advantage of ereaders that they can support the consistent collection of citations in the proper format as you progress through your research and need to keep track of knowledge gained for citation and bibliography purposes. In print, those little stacks of 3" x 5" notecards could be history. Learners will be able to integrate ethical information practices seamlessly into their reading, learning, and research. Educational support: I could tell if you've read your ebook or etextbook. Your teacher, professor, teacher's assistant, or lecturer could too. They could know how much you viewed and if you read any of the extended readings, visited the recommended websites, or completed the assignments. This could put some spine into scaffolded teaching strategies for foundational education. We can insert test questions, exercises, journals, surveys, collaboration software, and more into an ebook. The next generation of learners may be the best-and most followed and watched-yet. You can insert your own concerns and excitement here. Big Brother can arrive soon. Revitalizing librarianship: As so many ebooks appear online, identifying and acquiring an ebook that matches the user's needs becomes a major hurdle. Librarians and our metadata skills have a few clues about how to handle that-from OCLC's WorldCat alliance with Google Books and Amazon to our own intranet architecture, ontology, and taxonomy skills.
The "book" debate is certainly running apace and amuck. I am amused at how many times I was asked by the civilians this year about the death of print, books, reading, libraries, what have you. I try not to look appalled and just ask them what evidence they see.
My view is that the research and statistics seem to show an increase in reading across all generations when you look at it holistically; an increase in the sales of books, especially when all formats are considered; and an increase in populations of higher education learners and researchers. You also see some pretty big global players investing very heavily in the future of the book. I've lost count of the number of major hardware technology and telecommunication vendors that are chasing the book on tablets, phones, PCs, etc. And when you look at the millions and millions of dollars being spent by Google to digitize books and the parallel projects in many countries funded by government, academia, and not-for-profits, I don't see books looking like they're not interesting, on life support, or preparing to die. I do see it getting easier and easier to identify and acquire books than ever before in history. I see dozens of online bookstores chasing global ebook sales by big name companies such as Sony, Apple, Google (soon with Google Editions), Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc. Sales of ebooks are growing rapidly, and there's a ton of upside for many years to come. Circulation in public libraries is up in print, and ebooks in libraries have had positive impacts on usage measures for all types of libraries. I see multinational legal and treaty discussions top the priority list of many major nations trying to create a simpler framework for selling and protecting books internationally. And I see superefforts in the development of new standards and testing of reading software integrated into learning, social, research, and entertainment activities that seem to get better every day as we learn more about reading books in this semi-new way.
For the first time in my professional life, I see a huge, complex debate about the future of learning, libraries, and content involving more stakeholders than ever before, possibly in history. I see an excitement at the nexus between learning and libraries too. We should recall the old saw that we should always be careful what we wish for because we might get it. It's a great time to be a librarian participating in the creation of new plateaus for reading, books, education, culture, entertainment, enjoyment, and more. And it's going to get more exciting, not less, in the coming years. SOURCES
50 Benefits of Ebooks: A Thinking Person's Guide to the Digital Reading Revolution (September 2009) by Michael Pastore, with an afterword by Michael S. Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg; paperback, 372 pp.; $20; Ebook editions (PDF and EPUB) $4; ISBN: 978-0-927379-17-5; www.zorba.us/?page_id=142
Ebooks: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly http://blog.libraryjournal.com/tennantdigitallibraries/2010/08/19/ e-books-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly - jmapes1 Oct 30, 2011- jmapes1 Oct 30, 2011
By Stephen Abram, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and Markets for Gale, a part of Cengage Learning
Stephen Abram, M.L.S., is vice president, strategic partnerships and markets for Gale, a part of Cengage Learning. He is a past president of the Special Libraries Association, the Ontario Library Association, and the Canadian Library Association. He is the author of ALA Editions'Out Front with Stephen Abram: AGuide for Information Leaders and Stephen's Lighthouse blog. Stephen would love to hear from you at stephen.abram@gmail.com.
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Authors:Abram, Stephen stephen.abram@gmail.com Source:MultiMedia & Internet@Schools; Nov/Dec2010, Vol. 17 Issue 6, p13-16, 4p
The article explores the pros and cons of printed books (p-books) and electronic books (e-books) and compares the classroom with the out-of-classroom library use of books. Some of the advantages of p-books include packaging, fonts, the ability to share p-books, easier to read and requires little or no maintenance like updating the software or charging the battery. The advantages of e-booksinclude customizable displays, reading support for e-readers with reading abilities, and wider range of choice and access.
P-Books vs. Ebooks: Are There Education Issues?
Contents
For the first time in my professional life, I see a huge, complex debate about the future of learning, libraries, and content involving more stakeholders than ever before, possibly in history.
IN other columns this year, I have explored the nature of the ebook in school libraries. Looking back, I realized I hadn't actually discussed the pros and cons of the print and electronic formats for books in general. I also didn't exactly focus on the classroom as opposed to the out-of-classroom library use of books. So I'll cover that in this issue. I think we'll start this as a simple list of pros and cons. Note, however, that this list could be out-of-date very quickly due to the rapid development of the e-reader and ebook space and changing regulatory environments and laws. Also note that the ebook experience is quite different on a laptop or PC versus on an e-reader or a smartphone. However, this is how it looks to me at the end of 2010.
WHAT'S SO GOOD ABOUT PRINT BOOKS? Look and feel: I've never gotten this benefit to the extent that I hear it from others, but I can't deny it when people say that the feel of a book, its leather cover, and the heft in your hands are like an aphrodisiac to them. Add to this the folks who go wild over the smell of a book and you see what I mean. When we look at learning styles, we must acknowledge that some learners need the touch and smell experience to lock down comprehension and retention. A lot of research supports smell as a major element in memory.
Packaging: Print books can be more beautiful. Gold foil or embossing rarely translates well into electronic images. Pages of illustrated books, in particular, are laid out with care. Since most e-readers wrap text to accommodate the standard screen size, the beauty and intention of the layout can be lost. Indeed, this can be particularly egregious when pictures and illustrations are embedded in the text at just the right place or when the form requires it-haiku or concrete poetry specifies the layout as part of the artistic merit of the work. When users change the font size, the issue gets worse. We know that layout can enhance learning by stimulating more than one learning style at a time. Indeed, some ebooks have the advantage of being able to employ sound and motion as well.
Fonts: Most e-readers and ebooks allow users to change the font and design choices, which can corrupt the author's or artist's intent. That said, we know from research that reading comprehension, retention, and learning can be enhanced by simple font-size changes. Young readers do better with larger fonts, and teens usually handle denser text with more facility. The PC as a reading device for straight text generally works best for short passages (less than five pages), although e-paper on e-readers seem to have similar results to p-books.
Extras: Some ebooks do not include such print book expectations as flyleaves, back covers, author bios, etc. The full print package can have more information and beauty. Many free (out-of-copyright) works provided in ebook packages often degrade cover art to mere title and author typescript-another cultural and historical degradation.
Perhaps this will be surmounted with a new generation of visual artists who mine the opportunities in using animation, 3D, and brighter color palettes. We'll see.
Sharing: You can share your print book. You own your copy of the book and can do with it as you choose. One of the joys in life is giving books that you enjoyed to a friend with your comments and hearty recommendation. It can face the limitation of one reader at a time for a single volume. If you don't think people are psychologically connected to their books, just ask any group about their experiences with lending books and their own return policies! People are attached in a very fundamental way (dare we say love) to print books. The initialism "DRM" is becoming a curse word in the emerging technological culture around reading and ebooks.
Advertising: I probably don't need to say too much on this point, but just about every other text and entertainment medium is liberally sprinkled with ads-magazines, television, newspapers, radio, etc. Print books have largely escaped this due to their narrow market niche and long usage cycle. With ebooks you can insert ads-concrete and stable or video-that can be timed to the purchase rather than to the publication cycle. Ads can be timely, and you certainly can expect to see them in ebooks very soon.
Secondhand books: You can easily lend your print copy to a friend, sell it, donate it to a sale or hospital, or place it in your personal library for future use. Few e-readers support lending or reselling ebooks. There is a market for used textbooks, and textbooks as class sets can be used for many years after the initial acquisition.
Safety: It's difficult to contract an electronic virus from a paper book. (I won't comment on the regular kinds of germs in school!)
Privacy: You won't be leaving a permanent digital trail of your personal reading habits online for commercial entities to mine, exploit, and contact you-as long as you purchase your print copies at a retailer for cash.
Easier to read: The high-contrast typesetting on good paper continues to rank higher in readability. This may change quickly, but e-paper readers have less contrast, and LCD readers such as the iPad are brighter than necessary for text in order to support video and website display.
Little or no maintenance: You don't have to update your software or charge your battery, but you do have to store them … and dust them occasionally. You are technologically independent and can read anywhere there is light. Indeed some (maybe most) classrooms are underwired from both an electricity and connectivity viewpoint.
All you need to read: You're born with the "equipment" you need to read-sight, ability, and sentience-and your education builds on that. From the point of view of those with challenges, the ebook may offer some bridges to learning that print does not.
Become a collector: This may or may not be a benefit, but for most book lovers and collectors I know-including myself-this activity is more like an illness, such as hoarding, than elegant collecting and curation. However, in our profession, it's a beautiful disease. At home, print books can be a visible indication of your taste, culture, education, and status as well as your decorating sensibilities. Few librarians are minimalists on this point. How does one accomplish this with a huge ebook collection? On the other hand, we can continue to refer to books and textbooks for many years. Unfortunately, there are difficulties in telling if the content is still correct or viable.
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF ELECTRONIC BOOKS? Customizable displays: Is the print too small? Make it bigger. You don't like the font? Choose a different one. As my own eyes decline into old age, I can read comfortably by changing the "book" to match my personal needs. Since an ebook is not in fixed form, it can be altered on-the-fly in useful ways to support how you wish to read it. All learners have their preferences, and with read-aloud functionality, we can transfer content and learning experiences beyond simple text literacy.
ADA compliance: Not only can some e-readers read the text in a book aloud, it can be done privately via headphones or in a shared way among parent and child or teacher and pupil. This removes boundaries for both sighted and visually impaired readers. In many ways, this can be used to surmount text learning issues.
Reading support: Some reading abilities and challenges are enhanced by e-readers. Different learning styles can be supported through the engagement with the more interactive environment of an ebook. Some reading disabilities can be overcome through page and font layout changes or by combining text reading with auditory stimuli.
You have how many books in your bag? Anyone who has ever picked up a kid's book bag or backpack knows what this means. We might be raising a generation of future hunchbacks. An e-reader can contain hundreds, indeed thousands, of books in mere ounces. The same benefit adheres to those who travel on long train, bus, or plane commutes or who vacation with a pile of books to read on the beach. It must be noted that content and experiences related to the mere book can also be loaded or linked.
Wider range of choice and access: No brick-and-mortar bookseller can have as many books in stock as an online ebook retailer. With nary a visit to the mall, you can have your desired read in minutes. We should of course remain mindful of the differences between the types of books and their applicability to e-readers. As I have noted in the past, there are different concerns, issues, and opportunities for fiction, nonfiction, reference, textbooks, scholarly works, children's books, etc.
Revitalize the past: The digitization efforts for historical collections will result in the creation of a transformational knowledgebase and a restoration of many cultures and thinking. We are entering a new discovery era.
Reinvent the book: Whether we ultimately call them books at all, we are seeing new creativity in the reinvention of books where video, animations, and sound can be integrated into the reading experience. We see learning labs, tests, journals, and more being integrated into the book and textbook. All of these experiments may not succeed, but something exciting and innovative is happening here. In addition, we are seeing the publishing and dissemination ecosystem evolve with the addition of new players and lower barriers to entry for brilliant authors, educators, and intellectuals … but also propagandists.
It's Green: Yeah, this might be overrated, but probably not. Over time, you'll save hundreds of trees and acres of forest by choosing to read ebooks over print, and more if you do the same for newspapers and magazines. When you delete an ebook you leave no post-consumer waste!
Privacy: It's much more difficult for others to see what you're reading in the airport lounge when you're doing it on an e-reader. Then again, you might be losing some of those serendipitous connections with other avid readers. For now, you might find that you're chatting about the reader instead of the book!
Social highlighting: Ebooks are just beginning to explore the potential of socially sharing highlighted quotes and passages. Highlighting is a useful activity, especially with nonfiction and for studying. Finding highlighted and useful passages and bookmarks can allow students and researchers to save time and perform better. On another level, this activity can also be social such as the Amazon Kindle page featuring the most highlighted passages of all time (http://kindle.amazon.com/popular_highlights). On the one hand, it's very interesting; on the other, it's invasive.
Making and taking notes: This benefits the serious scholar as an opportunity to engage in reading in a better way than creating ink marginalia while leaving, potentially, a digital trail for future scholars and students. For the recreational reader and for book clubs, it again adds a dimension that rises above print.
Dictionary function: How awesome is it that you can increase your vocabulary without needing to go to a print or online dictionary and interrupt the process of reading? Just tap on the word, get a definition, and understand the author's intent just that much easier. Limited vocabulary need not be a barrier for readers.
Integration with Twitter and Facebook: Some ebook readers have added the ability to share quotes from your reading experience with your "tweeps" and Facebook friends. Add to this the opportunity to share your insights, opinions, and reviews about what you have just read; integration with Amazon or your ebook retailer; or indeed your library, your club, your tribe, LibraryThing, etc., and this may put social reading to the forefront in ways unheard of since Bloomsbury. You can also share with your class.
Search: You can't make a list of what ebooks do better than print without considering search on many dimensions. You can search inside your work-for characters, back stories, concordance, index and contents entries, free text, and more. As a study aid or as part of your exploration of themes over series such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Orwell's works, or the books of the Bible, readers can explore to an extent not possible in print-and with a speed that any wizard of yore would consider black magic. It is extended learning on steroids.
Navigation: Flipping through a print book feels intuitive to us because we've grown up with print as it is now. That comfort is merely our experience. We didn't grow up with scrolls, and they don't feel as comfortable-indeed, they feel a bit nostalgic and antique. Comfort factors will change with ebooks as experience continues with e-readers and the format or as a new generation adopts them en masse. The clumsy feeling with ebooks today will gradually subside for most, just as other technologies that have entered the mainstream.
Citation support: It's a wonderful advantage of ereaders that they can support the consistent collection of citations in the proper format as you progress through your research and need to keep track of knowledge gained for citation and bibliography purposes. In print, those little stacks of 3" x 5" notecards could be history. Learners will be able to integrate ethical information practices seamlessly into their reading, learning, and research.
Educational support: I could tell if you've read your ebook or etextbook. Your teacher, professor, teacher's assistant, or lecturer could too. They could know how much you viewed and if you read any of the extended readings, visited the recommended websites, or completed the assignments. This could put some spine into scaffolded teaching strategies for foundational education. We can insert test questions, exercises, journals, surveys, collaboration software, and more into an ebook. The next generation of learners may be the best-and most followed and watched-yet. You can insert your own concerns and excitement here. Big Brother can arrive soon.
Revitalizing librarianship: As so many ebooks appear online, identifying and acquiring an ebook that matches the user's needs becomes a major hurdle. Librarians and our metadata skills have a few clues about how to handle that-from OCLC's WorldCat alliance with Google Books and Amazon to our own intranet architecture, ontology, and taxonomy skills.
The "book" debate is certainly running apace and amuck. I am amused at how many times I was asked by the civilians this year about the death of print, books, reading, libraries, what have you. I try not to look appalled and just ask them what evidence they see.
My view is that the research and statistics seem to show an increase in reading across all generations when you look at it holistically; an increase in the sales of books, especially when all formats are considered; and an increase in populations of higher education learners and researchers. You also see some pretty big global players investing very heavily in the future of the book. I've lost count of the number of major hardware technology and telecommunication vendors that are chasing the book on tablets, phones, PCs, etc. And when you look at the millions and millions of dollars being spent by Google to digitize books and the parallel projects in many countries funded by government, academia, and not-for-profits, I don't see books looking like they're not interesting, on life support, or preparing to die. I do see it getting easier and easier to identify and acquire books than ever before in history. I see dozens of online bookstores chasing global ebook sales by big name companies such as Sony, Apple, Google (soon with Google Editions), Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc. Sales of ebooks are growing rapidly, and there's a ton of upside for many years to come. Circulation in public libraries is up in print, and ebooks in libraries have had positive impacts on usage measures for all types of libraries. I see multinational legal and treaty discussions top the priority list of many major nations trying to create a simpler framework for selling and protecting books internationally. And I see superefforts in the development of new standards and testing of reading software integrated into learning, social, research, and entertainment activities that seem to get better every day as we learn more about reading books in this semi-new way.
For the first time in my professional life, I see a huge, complex debate about the future of learning, libraries, and content involving more stakeholders than ever before, possibly in history. I see an excitement at the nexus between learning and libraries too. We should recall the old saw that we should always be careful what we wish for because we might get it. It's a great time to be a librarian participating in the creation of new plateaus for reading, books, education, culture, entertainment, enjoyment, and more. And it's going to get more exciting, not less, in the coming years.
SOURCES
- 50 Benefits of Ebooks: A Thinking Person's Guide to the Digital Reading Revolution (September 2009) by Michael Pastore, with an afterword by Michael S. Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg; paperback, 372 pp.; $20; Ebook editions (PDF and EPUB) $4; ISBN: 978-0-927379-17-5; www.zorba.us/?page_id=142
- 5 Ways That Paper Books Are Better Than Ebooks http://m.readwriteweb.com/archives/5_ways_that_paper_**books**_ are_better_than_ebooks.php
- 5 Ways That Ebooks Are Better Than Paper Books http://m.readwriteweb.com/archives/5_ways_that_**ebooks**_are_b etter_than_paper_books.php
Ebooks: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly http://blog.libraryjournal.com/tennantdigitallibraries/2010/08/19/ e-books-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-
By Stephen Abram, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and Markets for Gale, a part of Cengage Learning
Stephen Abram, M.L.S., is vice president, strategic partnerships and markets for Gale, a part of Cengage Learning. He is a past president of the Special Libraries Association, the Ontario Library Association, and the Canadian Library Association. He is the author of ALA Editions'Out Front with Stephen Abram: AGuide for Information Leaders and Stephen's Lighthouse blog. Stephen would love to hear from you at stephen.abram@gmail.com.
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