Are e-books in Your Future? - electronic books in libraries

Information Outlook, Feb, 2001 by Susan E. Randolph

Who would choose to read an e-book rather than a printed book?

THE VISUALLY CHALLENGED FOR THE ADJUSTABLE TYPE SIZE AND FONT OF E-BOOKS.

The user of technical manuals for the bookmarking, hyperlinking, and annotating capabilities. The student and traveler for the portability of multiple titles. The researcher for keyword searching. The Late night reader for the optional backlighting that enables reading in the dark. The distance learner who needs access to materials twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And the forgetful reader for the ability to retrace the path of what was read and find the meaning of a word without leaving the reading chair. With e-book multimedia capabilities around the corner, potential users come to mind: the language student who wants to hear the pronunciation of a word; the model builder who would Like to see in a 3-D rendering exactly where to put the next piece; the reader of a Balanchine biography, who wishes to see a clip of a ballet performance. Who would choose to read an e-book? The very users academic, public, school, and special libraries serve. But do the most recent versions of e-books have a future in Libraries?

E-text--the Foundation of e-books

The content of e-books is digitized text. Michael Hart initiated a pioneering effort to digitize text in 1971 when he digitized the Declaration of Independence. His Project Gutenberg has now digitized more than 2,500 titles. These titles are in plain American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) text, and can be read on any computer system. Project Gutenberg's goal is to provide electronic text of all public domain titles shortly after they enter the public domain.

E-text makes it possible for librarians to obtain out-of-print books and materials that are not conventionally published because the audience is too small. Commercial vendors, such as Replica Books and Ingram's Lightning Source, store fully marked-up digital text or scanned page images and use recently developed high-speed laser printers to produce bound books, on demand, one at a time.

E-text has also been available for years on CD-ROM and diskette, media that enhance the text with search and multimedia capabilities that allow users to explore subjects in a way not supported by printed books. However, CD-ROM and diskette books have failed to flourish, primarily because of initial high production costs and the lack of a mass market for products other than reference works and games. Some libraries have added CD e-books to their collections and circulate them as they do audio CDs. Diskettes have not, however, found a secure niche in library collections. Walt Crawford, writing in the September 2000 American Libraries, expects the diskette form of e-book to fade away.

Two new web-based delivery mechanisms for e-text are on the market, however, and are slowly finding their way into libraries. Like the CD-ROMs and diskettes that preceded them, they add features to make the electronic form more than a transcription. Unlike CD-ROMs and diskettes, however, their e-text content is available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They fall into two categories: closed, dedicated device e-books, and open, multipurpose device e-books.

Closed, Dedicated Device e-books

Closed, dedicated device e-books require an e-book appliance that can be used only to read e-books. Furthermore, the content is locked to the e-book appliance to which it is downloaded from the web. E-Books cannot be transferred to another appliance from the same vendor, or to the appliance of another vendor, Users cannot print any portion of the text. A user who borrows a closed e-book from the library, rather than buying the e-book and appliance, does not have any hour/any day access.

Gemstar-TV Guide International dominates the market for closed, dedicated device e-Books since acquiring two leading makers of e-Book reading devices, NuvoMedia and SoftBook Press, in January 2000. Gemstar's REB110 and REB1200, successors to NuvoMedia's Rocket and Softbook Press' SoftBook, went on the market in November 2000. They are produced by the RCA unit of Thomson Multimedia under an agreement with Gemstar, and are smaller and lighter than their predecessors. Gemstar e-Books are purchased from the dialup Gemstar e-Book catalog that can be stored in the memory of the REB1100 and REB1200. Barnes and Nobel and Powells online sites also sell content for the RCA/Gemstar devices. In addition to titles from a range of publishers from Penguin Putnam to Prentice Hall, owners of RCA/Gemstar readers can download periodicals such as The Christian Science Monitor, New York Times on the Web, Highlights of the Wall Street Journal Online, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, Fortune, Business Week, and Computer World. E-Book content is downloaded by connecting the REB1100 or REB1200 to a phone line. Owners of the REB1100 also have the option of downloading e-Book content first to a PC, and then to the reader. PCs are not required for downloading to either device, however. Downloading occurs at a rate of fifty to one-hundred pages per minute, depending on graphic content.