Ebooks Update

May 2005

Prepared by Lori Bell (lbell927@yahoo.com) and Tom Peters (tpeters@tapinformation.com) for the WE CAN DO IT project team. 


Highlights of the E-Books In Education Conf held in NYC on April 14 (Tom):

  • This conference focused more on adoption and diffusion phenomena of ebooks in education than on cutting edge technologies.   In some fields and settings, ebooks are becoming widely accepted and used. 
    • For example, fully one-third of the dental students in the U.S. now receive all of their dental school textbooks and documents in digital formats.
  • The Open eBook Forum (OeBF) announced that it has changed its name to the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). 
    • The new URL will be www.idpf.org. 
    • The IDPF really is an industry group, not primarily a professional association or an advocate for end-users. 
    • The IDPF, however, does have a Library Special Interest Group, which has been sporadically active. 
  • Disaggregation of content was a recurring theme.  The textbook as we know it—as a static compilation of information on a topic—is no longer the best way to meet the curricular needs of schools and the online learning behaviors and preferences of e-learners.
  • Repurposing content was another recurring theme.  At various stages in the production and distribution processes, as well as during actual end-use, content needs to be converted and repurposed. 

 

Device Developments and Trends (Tom):

  • BookLocker
    • Will become available for sale this summer
    • Digital textbooks for K-12 and higher education
    • The ebook reader software will be on the BookLocker device
    • When inserted into a network-connected computer, the BookLocker will automatically download any updates to the textbooks or software. 
    • Flash drive combining a secure area and an open area for storing files
    • MSRP not yet announced
    • http://www.sandisk.com/retail/booklocker.asp
  • Librie
    • Still not officially available in North America
  • PDAs
    • Continued declining sales worldwide
  • Dedicated Reading Devices
    • In general, dedicated reading devices (as opposed to PDAs, cell phones, and other multi-purpose devices) continue to struggle in the marketplace. 
  • MP3 Players
    • As the displays become larger, they are being used as ebook reading devices, too. 
  • Cell Phones
  • Portable game consoles
  • For a wonderful overview of ebook devices see Megan Fox’s presentation at the recent “Ebooks in Illinois Academic Libraries” conference http://web.simmons.edu/~fox/ebook_devices_2005_short.pdf


Display Technology Developments (Tom):

  • Display technologies for the general consumer market should improve soon, in terms of contrast, brightness, energy consumption, portability, etc. 
  • Kent Displays commercializes the Cholesteric LCD display.
    • Requires no energy to maintain an image. 
    • This type of display can be placed on plastic or even cloth. 
    • There is no flickering with this type of display. 
  • E-Ink, Inc. has been working on commercializing eletrophoretic displays, which use microcapsules to create a display.  In April 2005 Seiko announced that they will sell a wristwatch using E-Ink’s technology.


Software Developments and Trends (Tom):

  • March 2005: a new Symbian operating system version of eReader software from eReader.com (formerly Palm Digital Media) was released.  Symbian OS is used by smartphones. 
  • April 2005:  Mobipocket acquired by Amazon.com. 
  • New contender from Microsoft to PDF?



Integration of Text with Audio, Images, and Video (Lori)

  • Tumblebooks – Audio, large print, Read-Alongs combining audio and large print
  • Video on demand – watch on computer screen or transfer to self-destroying DVD
  • Classical Music from OverDrive (with movies to follow?) 


Library Management Systems (Lori):

  • Challenges for Libraries Deciding on System
    • pricing of system;
    • availability and number of titles offered by vendor;
    • integration with online catalog;
    • availability of different formats;
    • no one vendor seems to offer everything (all types of content reasonably priced) through a single interface.
  • Libwise (Fictionwise) – Low cost; site hosted; Integrates with online catalog; Mobipocket only – public domain, popular fiction and non-fiction
  • OverDrive – higher cost; site hosted; can integrate with online catalogs; Ebooks in Adobe and Mobipocket; digital audiobooks; e-book creation software. Some classics, public domain, popular fiction and non-fiction – (http://www.overdrive.com)
  • NetLibrary – Cost based on size of collection – ebooks primarily non-fiction; also now offering 800+ digital audio titles, price based on circulation – (http://www.netlibrary.com)
  • Baker and Taylor ED – ebooks in PDF format – new partnership with netLibrary to deliver more content
  • Ebrary –  Subscription pricing based on FTE; integrates other digital content databases; integrates with online catalog – (http://www.ebrary.com)
  • EBL –  For academic and research libraries; can purchase access to a “collection” or purchase by title; Read-aloud for all titles - (http://www.eblib.com/)


Pricing and Usage Models (Lori):

  • Allow libraries to swap out underperforming titles
  • Unlimited simultaneous users
  • Provide a variety of reading options
    • online,
    • burn to CD,
    • transfer to handheld device,
    • read offline on laptop or computer


Vendor Updates and Trends (Both):

  • No vendor has gone bankrupt in the past six months!  Even Questia has managed to stay in business. 
  • Audio-Read from Australia (http://www.audio-read.com.au/home.htm) has not yet launched in North America
  • Ebrary seems to be positioning itself to move into the digital repository area.
  • Paperback Digital’s future may be more in the area of supplying content to other vendors, rather than becoming a strong vendor themselves.   
  • Subscription rather than collection services
    • Libraries “subscribe” to the vendor’s collection instead of purchasing titles to build a local collection
    • This allows vendors and libraries to be more agile and move with the trends
    • No selection allowed.  All subscribing libraries get access to the entire master collection.  
    • This model does not provide any stability for library users in terms of access to an ongoing collection or format.


Update about Standards and Emerging Best Practices (Tom)

  • OpenReader Consortium (http://www.openreader.org/) remains active.
    • Quoting from a recent announcement, “OpenReader is a cooperative project to create an open, standards-based digital publication distribution format to facilitate current, continuing, and long-term access to ebooks and other types of digital publications and documents.

      The OpenReader distribution format will be based on well-established XML vocabularies, publication frameworks, and W3C technologies. This includes OEBPS (the Open eBook Publication Structure framework), XHTML,       CSS, MathML, SVG and XLink, to name the more important ones.  Our current plans also include eventual native support for TEI, NewsML, and possibly other advanced and specialized document markup vocabularies and publication frameworks.”

  • The DAISY standard needs some Miracle Grow!


Studies and Field Tests (Both):

  • Thomson Learning Labs is conducting a test to learn how digital alternatives will be used in formal learning environments.  The University of Virginia is serving as the test site.  Wireless tablet PCs are being used in three classes.
  • Much more work needs to be done in this area. 



Reflections, Predictions, and Recommendations (Both): 

  • Further integration of ebooks with audio books and other media
  • There are still many file types, markup languages, and proprietary formats.  This has been the problem with Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and others for years.  Why should the ebook world be any different?
  • Reading appliances will continue to evolve.  Several years it seemed that dedicated reading devices would go away and more ebook readers would move to the PDA platform.  That happened.  Now the PDA is in decline as cell phone sales surge. 
  • Ebooks and digital audio books will continue to be major areas of growth within the overall publishing industry.
  • Model of “one book, one user” is changing to “many users for one book at one time”.  This really is what networked access to digital content is all about. 
  • As the first generations to grow up with computers continue to age, and as display technology continues to improve, the stigma against reading on screen will die away. 
  • The ebook market will develop better access models for libraries and library users.
  • The variety of devices will continue indefinitely.  Despite the tremendous market share that the Apple iPod briefly held in the MP3 player market, over time we will not see most users migrate two one device brand, model, or even design. 
  • The ways people can interact with an e-text (we used to call this “reading”) will continue to diversify, evolve, and improve.  In the long term, the big winner of the ebook “revolution” will be the end-user. 
  • CDs may become a “legacy” storage medium soon
  • Collaborative reading of (or interacting with) ebooks may become big
  • Locally created ebooks and e-content from libraries and other cultural institutions may become more prevalent and useful to end-users
  • Ebooks in languages other than English (Chinese, Spanish, etc.) may come to dominate the world ebook market. 
  • Female readers will become a major consumer force in the ebook market
  • The much-hyped print-on-demand movement may fizzle as more people become accustomed to reading on screen. 
  • Tablet PCs and ultra-personal computers never will have much of an impact on the overall, worldwide market for computers. 
  • E-books for children will become one of the hottest, most innovative segments of the overall ebook movement. 
  • General consumer portable playback devices should become more accessible to all potential users.  We need larger buttons, larger and clearer screens, and better design in general. 
  • Libraries should work hard to develop centralized, codified, trusted catalogs and finding aids for ebooks, digital audio books, etc.
  • Time will tell on the subscription versus collection models of library access to ebooks.   

 

Sources of Free Ebooks (Distributed in December 2004, but still useful)

(compiled by Paul Tassell and posted to The E-Book Community, a Yahoo Group)

·         http://www.gutenberg.net/

o        More than 13,000 public domain books transcribed in ASCII format.

o        A digital audio book collection (both narrated and TTS content) is available at http://www.gutenberg.org/audio/

·         http://www.manybooks.net

o        More than 10,000 free e-books formatted to be read on PDAs

o        Supports a variety of formats, including PDF, eReader, Plucker, RocketeBook

·         http://www.e-book.com.au/freebooks.htm

o        A very extensive webliography of free e-books and related content

·         http://www.baen.com/library/

o        Small free collection in several formats, including MS Reader, Mobipocket, Rocket eBook, and RTF

·         http://www.memoware.com/mw.cgi?screen=main

o        Hundreds of free e-book titles for PDAs

·         http://www.blackmask.com/page.php

o        Over 17,000 titles in dozens of categories

o        Most books are available in several formats, including MS Reader, Mobipocket, PDF

·         http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/

o        Over 20,000 ebooks in English available free of charge for non-commercial use

·         http://www.archive.org/texts/collection.php?collection=millionbooks

o        The goal of the Million Book Project, part of the Internet Archive, is to make a million books available by 2005

o        The current collection contains 14,631 titles

o        Ergo, they need to add 2,700 books each day throughout 2005!

  • http://www.bibliomania.com/main.html
    • Over 2,000 classics in HTML for online reading. 
  • http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/  (added by Tom Peters)
    • Over 1800 e-books including classic British and American fiction, major authors, children's literature, the Bible, Shakespeare, American history, etc.
    • Available in MS Reader and eReader (Palm) versions, plus HTML online reading.