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Future of the book? Challenge of the digital world

In recent years there has been much debate about the future of the book in a digital world. E-books have already become a reality. There are advantages and disadvantages to digital books but it appears that both print and digital books will remain. Teacher librarians and children’s librarians will need to keep up with the trends to meet the needs of young people in a world where technology is rapidly changing.

In a survey (1) conducted in Adelaide in December 2001, 106 students aged from the ages of 8 to 16, were questioned about whether they would read books on an e-book reader. 69% of them said that they would be prepared to use an e-book reader for reading. Of the students surveyed it was the youngest, 29 of 30, or 96% Grade 3 students, who indicated that they would read books on an e-book reader.

When questioned about whether they would like to have a reference library on an e-book reader 84% of all the students indicated that they thought this was a good idea.

They were able to articulate clearly both the advantages and disadvantages of reading electronically and the majority had no trouble in envisioning a future where electronic books would be part of the culture.

Types of electronic books

E-books have already become a reality. This is not surprising as the technology of the book has seen a number of transitions. Over the centuries there has been a series of changes in the way that words are presented. Clay, wax, papyrus, vellum, cloth and paper have all be used and stored as tablets, scrolls or folios or books (2) There are now three types of electronic books available. The first are web books, which can be viewed via the World Wide Web. Project Gutenberg,(3) for example, is a long established library of electronic books. Stephen King's web book Riding the Bullet, was downloaded 5000,000 times within the first 48 hours of its release in March 2000 and is the most popular web book to date. The second type of e-book could be called Palm books, and can either be a type of PDA or a dedicated reader device such as an e-book reader. They are portable and do not necessarily require an Internet connection. The third still under development, would use electronic ink to display content (4) on ultra thin high-resolution flexible sheets. Books using this technology are likely to have several hundred blank pages, bound in a conventional cover and will be able to be loaded with many volumes of selected books. They will be as easy to read as traditional books today but will have an instant memory to select what the user requires. (5)

Advantages of electronic books

One of the biggest advantages to electronic books is their ability to store data. Even today's relatively primitive appliances hold 10 or 20 books and a software book reader mounted on a high-end laptop can already store hundreds of books easily. In a few years at least some high-end appliances will house hundreds, if not thousands, of books simultaneously, and certainly laptops with software book readers will house thousands or tens of thousands of books at once. This ability to have information all together in the one place certainly had appeal for the Adelaide school students surveyed. 86% said that having a reference library on an e-book reader with an encyclopedia, a dictionary and a thesaurus would help them with schoolwork and daily life.

The portability of e-book readers is also one of the outstanding advantages of electronic books. As one Adelaide student commented "You would have everything you need in one thing. It would save having to carry huge books around." Bill Hill, developer of the e-book reader for Microsoft says that it is his favourite format for reading a novel because " I can stick the device in my pocket and I can carry 60 novels on vacation or wherever I happen to be and I can read them in bed in the dark. The ability to take your whole library and stick it in your pocket is absolutely amazing". (6) Duke University students also reported that having textbooks together in one place could be an advantage (7). The idea of portable personal digital libraries, not portable electronic books, is probably the future role of these appliances.

A further advantage of electronic books, in particular e-book readers, is their versatility and increasing capabilities. They offer many features not possible with print on paper. Content can be expanded, customised or updated. Notes can be written in the electronic equivalent of margins. Text can be searched much more efficiently than using an index in traditional book form. The size of print and font can be changed to suit one's taste and the size adjusted for aging eyes. The Brisbane Public Library system has purchased some e-book readers and is trialing their use. Interestingly, it has been the more senior of the population who have responded favourably, due to ease of reading because of the backlight and the ability to format into large print. (8) Many of the students surveyed mentioned the fact that it would be easier to read on an e-book reader, and one said that they would use an e-book reader because "there's more light and the print's clearer and can be adjusted." E-books will also have the facility to read aloud and people who are visually impaired can have access to books in audio format at the same time that the books are released in print format.(9).

For people reading a second language e-book readers will be very beneficial. Having an interactive dictionary, glossaries and vocabulary lists will add value and meaning to reading.(10) Students of English as a second language would find dictionaries of particular benefit.

An important advantage of the e-book for a user is for doing research. They have the ability to search through the text looking for specific words or phrases. Reference books, factual books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, bibliographies, abstracts and indexing guides are already widely acceptable in electronic form where the content is the most important feature. "All these genres share several key properties: their readers want to find and then read relatively short chunks of specific text; they are frequently updated, and in some cases they can be greatly enriched by the larger amounts of content and multimedia amenities that the electronic environment can inexpensively accommodate “. (11)They are not like novels where the work is read sequentially from beginning to end. Travel guidebooks that can be installed on a Palm PDA illustrate this well. The tourist can quickly locate a map of the area being visited by keying in a street name, look up nearby tourist attractions and read about features. The PDA computer is smaller and lighter to carry than a traditional guidebook, no large map needs to be unfolded to find directions and the key word search is much more efficient than attempting to use an index to a book. Bill Hill (12) gives an example of the versatility of having for example, Peterson's field guides to birds a waterproof e-book. The content could be read and searched and audio tracks of bird sounds and videos of the birds in flight would be available.

Electronic books allow hyperlinking instant jumps from one idea to another in another part of the book or in another work. It also allows hyper story creation, where the reader shapes the outcome of a novel by making hundreds of choices along the way. Many of the new books will become interactive, perhaps with minimal text, fully animated cartoons or video sequences. (13) This will probably appeal to the generation that is " more fluent in images that words, more fluent in the language conventions of conversation and on-line chat than those of standard written English". (14)

A fundamental advantage of e-books is their method of publication. An electronic text, which could be created by anyone, has the potential for instant worldwide distribution over the Internet. Project Gutenberg has published out of print texts of the classics and other copyright free information which can all be downloaded without cost by anyone in the world. Updates to scientific, technical and medical information can be published instantly anytime with large benefit to the education community. Electronic books also offer instant access to materials from virtually any location, without the dangers of damaging a printed copy. It also allows the publishing of novels and other books that might never be published in print format. An example is the war diary of Tom Pledger, which is stored in the Australian War Museum Canberra. Before being donated to the Museum it was published on the World Wide Web, translated into Japanese and can be accessed from all over the world. Electronic books mean that books do not need to go out of print.

The economic advantages to e-books are readily apparent. Although the overhead publication and distribution costs of electronic books are already lower than using a printing press, these have not yet been passed onto the consumer. Once an efficient and comfortable method of on-line distribution is available, then it will take much less effort to purchase books, and at considerable reduction in price. “Production, transportation and warehousing costs could be reduced or eliminated, intermediaries could be bypassed, trees could be saved, and with reduced book shelving at home, more wall space could be devoted to pictures of your children, artwork, bowling trophies, diplomas, or stuffed moose heads. As with the earlier paperback revolution, books could be rendered cheaper and more readily available then ever before.” (15)

Many of the students who were surveyed believed that they would use e-book readers to read because they liked computers and technology. As one said, it was "more fun and up to date" and as another mentioned, "I like computer stuff better."

Savings in the use of paper was brought up by many of the older students as an advantage in using e-books. It may be that in the future as reading from the screen becomes more comfortable that it will be possible to use less paper.

Disadvantages of e-books

Screen glare and eyestrain are a serious concern for many potential users of e-book technology. A major worry of the students surveyed in Adelaide and Duke University (16) was that reading from an e-book reader could hurt their eyes. The display resolution of computer screens and electronic devices is considerably less than the print quality produced by a printing press. This problem has been recognised by the groups developing e-book readers. Bill Hill with a team from Microsoft, is working towards making reading the e-book as comfortable as reading the printed page. He believes that "If an electronic book isn't readable, if you can't have the same kind of immersed reading experience that you can have with a printed book, it will never succeed." (17) This emphasis on readability includes the introduction of ClearType and building typefaces that makes reading on a screen easier for the reader and may help to overcome the fears of people about reading from a screen.

Reading from a computer does not appear to work very well for many people, in particular when reading long texts. The survey of 104 Duke University students showed that when reading from a computer, most people would prefer to print out material and read it. “ More than half of those surveyed decide whether to print out readings based on the length of the reading, and of those 88% would print out readings that are more than five pages in length.” (18) Jamie Mackenzie says he has been astounded by the large number of books sold to educators who might find much of the same information and many of the same articles available for free on-line at From Now On. (19) It appears that many people prefer to use on-line to browse, scan articles and see if they want to read them. If so they either print the article if that is convenient or buy the book.

One of the disadvantages of e-books is that reading from a computer lacks the familiarity and comfort of reading from a book. As one student wrote, "I find book reading easier when I'm lying down and that's hard to do on a computer".. “The computer is fine for e-mail and browsing but there is something about curling up on a comfortable chair with a book that lap-tops and hand-helds simply fail to match' (20)."

The useability of the e-books does not yet approach that of paper books. A paper book can be opened and flipped through, while an electronic text is more difficult to navigate. The reader is able to gauge the length of book by thickness, and an Adelaide student made a comment that it was “interesting to read the cover and the blurb." This disadvantage is recognised by the manufacturers of e-books. In an effort to overcome these problems, the e-book reader is copying many of the characteristics of books just as Gutenberg did when he began printing with movable metal type. He made print look just like the manuscript books that had been created by scribes. (21) Both the e-book reader and the flexible pages e-book have been given the same size and shape of a paperback book.

A disadvantage of e-books for reading fiction is that the World Wide Web has made the use of electronic information very different in character from that in a paper book. People are accustomed to using electronic forms to look up information on computers, rather than taking the journey into other worlds that a good fiction book will do. (22) When reading a printed fiction book, the reader chooses to leave reality for a while but when using e-books, there is still the element of having to control the electronic equipment. For example an e-book reader has to be switched off on an aeroplane until a certain height is reached and it is not as easy to read in the bath with an e-book . Authors as popular as J.K. Rowling will ensure that printed books continue to be devoured by eager readers, because of the power of their story telling (23) and because of the ease of use.

E-books are unable to duplicate the uniqueness of some types of printed books. Many of the students surveyed pointed out the different functions and types of books. The 8-10 year old students who were surveyed would read using an e-book reader depending on the type of book that they wanted to read. They preferred print for picture books, fold out books, and lift up books but would be happy to read a novel on an e-book reader.

Another disadvantage of electronic books is that they all require hardware for viewing. Unless the hardware, Internet connection or battery power that is required by an e-book reader is readily available, then its electronic documents are useless. As one student mentioned you "need power. If there is a data failure, it is deleted. Records will be best kept on paper."

A drawback to the acceptance of e-books is their unreliable life span. Paper has a much longer life span than most digital forms of storage. Because of the rapid development of new computer systems it is difficult to judge whether the software or hardware will become outdated like the obsolete 5.25-inch floppy disk. As new hardware is developed structures must be put into place to allow for the migration of existing materials to the new platforms so that they can still be accessed. (24) Methods of preserving the electronic documents must also be developed. A high degree of reliability of the equipment must be part of the electronic devices that handle the replacements for printed books.

A major disadvantage of e-book readers is their high price, which makes their purchase prohibitive to many potential users. There is also a more limited selection of electronic texts, which are often at least as costly as their printed counterparts. Prices will need to drop for improved products as will the prices for e-book publications. (25) With Microsoft and Barnes and Noble Books, two huge companies combining forces, there is industry expectation of a potential commercial market but it is unlikely to grow until the products are within the price range of the average wage earner or institution and there is a wide selection of e-books.

Many publishing issues will have to be resolved before there is a widespread distribution of e-books. The Internet has provided a huge instant worldwide distribution of works without the restrictions that have traditionally been part of the publishing industry. Copyright issues could be considered a serious drawback to digital forms of publication. Publishers are waiting for a secure form of e-book system, which protects authors and publishers rights without violating users privacy or restricting the features or useability of the products. Methods of distribution of e-books have not yet been developed to match those of the printed book. There are still questions to be asked about whether the purchaser of the e-book owns it and can lend it to friends and whether the purchaser is able to take copies of pages of the e-book. (26)

A distinct handicap to the use of e-books is the fact that there is not a set standard for e-book readers at the moment. Like the early video recorders not all the e-book readers are compatible. This is a big disadvantage for potential purchasers as some e-books are only available for specific platforms and will not load onto other e-readers. This has been recognised by the Microsoft Company , which is working with other industry leaders and publishers to develop a standard so that any e-book can be downloaded onto any e-book reader. (27)

Reliance on e-books for research has disadvantages for the learning of students. The ease of cutting and pasting information makes plagiarism common. Cheat sites that offer essays and reports are available and it is possible to copy or purchase finished essays.. A study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project said that 18% of the students who were surveyed knew of someone who has used the Internet to cheat, and that cheating appeared to escalate as students gained more experience on the Internet. (28) Marylaine Block comments that with the advent of the Internet, students do not think in the sequential logical way that is fostered by reading. Instead they click away after reading approximately 700 words. She believes that the books that help shape culture will be neglected because of this inability to read long prose. (29). Students will need to be taught the skills of doing in-depth research.

Internet versus non-fiction books

The Internet could be a bigger threat to the non-fiction book than e-books on e-book readers. The Pew survey (30) (pg 1 Silicon) showed that the Internet is replacing libraries for homework. 71% of the children surveyed said that they relied on it the most in completing a project, while 24% said that they relied on libraries the most. Many families have instant access to a wealth of almost free information on the Internet that is easier to use than any e-book or encyclopaedia. There is now an abundance of well-designed web sites with excellent information and interactive abilities. Search engines are also very effective.

Libraries of the future

There are many implications for school libraries with the advent of the e-book. Technology is constantly changing and it will be necessary to keep up to date with the applications of electronic book technology. Moreover, computer users are becoming increasingly comfortable interacting with information in a digital format and it is likely that this will grow as more families and schools purchase computers. With the present cost of the e-book reader, it may be better to wait until there is a standard for e-book readers before purchasing. Libraries will then need to make a decision whether they buy e-book readers to loan out until the devices become more commonplace. (31)

Teacher librarians will also need to be certain that the technology will benefit their students. The survey showed that the students who did not like reading and who were willing to say so, were quite adamant that using an e-book reader would not increase their reading. On the other hand, 25% of students said that they would prefer to read using an e-book reader .

44% of students also indicated that they thought they would read more if their books were stored on an e-book reader. This indicates the need to keep up with developments of the electronic book.

If a reader or institution wants to build up a digital library, some of the advantages of a print library will need to be addressed. Clarity will be needed around the issue of whether the e-book is owned as an object and can be lent out or whether the purchaser simply has access to it. If the technology is superseded or the firm that supplied the reader goes out of business, then it must be clear that the e-books can be used on e-book readers from other firms. (32)

If students begin to build up large personal digital libraries, then teacher librarians will need to consider the types of skills that students need to access these and develop a teaching program to teach them. Not only will students need to learn how to research effectively, the selection of books to put into their digital libraries will be very important. Families and individuals will need advice on selection criteria and reputable firms from which to purchase their digital library.

Because of its unique characteristics, the printed book will not disappear. However it would appear that once the e-book has the readability, usability and other features of a printed book, and has dropped in price, then it will be successful, particularly with new generations of readers who have grown up familiar with computers.

References

1. Pledger, P. (2001) Future of the book: Survey 0f 109 Adelaide students aged 8-16. Unpublished. Contact ppledger@educationau.edu.au for further details.

2.Johnson, Doug (1998) The future of books http.4j.lane.edu/cybrary/futurebooks.html Accessed 10^th October 2001, p. 1.

3. Project Gutenberg (2002) http://promo.net/pg/ Accessed 21st January 2002.

4. Xia, Lin Professor and Hubbard, John (2000) Books of the future http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~jmh29/653/final.pdf Accessed 9th January, 2002, p.3

5. Dixon, Dr Patrick (2001) Books in a Cyberworld http://www.globalchange.com/bookfuture.htm Accessed 9th January 2002, p.2

6. An interview with Bill Hill (2001) http://www.microsoft.com/reader/bill_hill.asp Accessed 9th January 2002.

7. Books or bits: the future of reading (2000) http://www.duke.edu/~jgd1/paper.html Accessed 9th January 2002, p7.

8. Bain, G. E-books update (2001) Conference session at ASLA Conference Forging future directions 2001.

9. An interview with Bill Hill op.cit. p.3.

10. Johnson, Doug (1998) op. cit. p2.

11. Lynch, Clifford (2001) The Battle to define the Future of the book in the digital world http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_6/lynch/index.html#l17 Accessed 9th January 2002. P.8

12. An interview with Bill Hill op. cit. p.3.

13. Dixon, Dr Patrick op.cit. p.3.

14. Block, Marylaine (2001) In need of rescue: Non-fiction http://marylaine.com/exlibris/xlib123.html Accessed 9th January 2002.p.2

15.Hughes, John C. The future of the book http://academics.smcvt.edu/edtech/MouseClicks/MC1-01.htm p.1

16. Books or bits: the future of reading (2000) op.cit. p.4.

17. An interview with Bill Hill op. cit. p.1.

18. Books or bits: the future of reading (2000) op.cit. p. 3.

19. McKenzie Jamie (2001) Paper still works FNO, The Educational Technology Journal, Vol 11, No 3 November December http://fno.org/nov01/paperworks.html Accessed 9th January 2002, p. 3.

20. McKenzie Jamie (2001) op.cit. p. 3.

21. Lienhard, John H. (1996) The metaphor of the book p.2http://www.uh.edu/engines/tlatalk.htm Accessed 9th January 2002, p.3.

22. Lienhard, John H. (1996) op.cit. p.4

23. Block, Marylaine (2001) op.cit. p.2.

24. Books or bits: the future of reading (2000) op.cit. p.6.

25. Xia, Lin Professor and Hubbard, John (2000) op.cit. p.4.

26. Lynch, Clifford (2001) op.cit. p.31.

27. Hill, Bill (1999) Towards a paperless society http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1999/07-07ebooks.asp Accessed 9th January, 2002, p. 5.

28. Study says Internet replacing libraries for homework(2001) Silicon Valley Technology http://www.siliconvalley.com/ Accessed 3^rd September, 2001, p.2.

29. Block, Marylaine (2001) op.cit. p.2.

30. Study says Internet replacing libraries for homework(2001) op.cit. p.1.

31. Lynch, Clifford (2001) op.cit. p.36.

32. Lynch, Clifford (2001) op.cit. p.34-35.