E-Books: boon or bane

Information is a commodity that is of vital importance to everyone. In the past, a wide range of paper-based approaches have been used to provide access to information. Undoubtedly, books and related artefacts have been one of the most common. Nowadays, there is an increasing interest in the use of electronic books and other forms of online documentation in order to disseminate information and provide global access to it.

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. 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. The digitization of the world’s enormous store of library books, an effort dating to the early 1990s in the United Kingdom, the United States come into reality, when the search engine giant Google announced the ‘Google Book Search’ service in December 2004. Google has already singed agreement with Oxford, Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan, and New York Public Library, to convert the full text of millions of library books into searchable web pages.

There are at present three types of electronic books available. The first are web books, which can be viewed via the World Wide Web. For example, Stephen King's web book “Riding the Bullet”, which 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 one is still under development, would use electronic ink to display content 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.

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 store hundreds of books easily. The portability of e-book readers is also one of the outstanding advantages of electronic books. The ability to take whole library and stick it in pocket is absolutely amazing. 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, customized 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. 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. For people reading a second language, e-book reader will be very beneficial. Having an interactive dictionary, glossaries and vocabulary lists will add value and meaning to reading.

Another 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. 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. Electronic books allow hyper linking instant jumps from one idea to another in another part of the book or in another work.

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. It also allows the publishing of novels and other books that might never be published in print format. 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, and degrees,et al.

Disadvantages of e-books

However, e-book could attract the eyes of the netizens; still it is far away to overtake the smooth flexible conventional paper-based book because of some common pitfalls. Screen glare and eyestrain are a serious concern for many potential users of e-book technology. 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 recognized by the groups developing e-book readers.

Reading from a computer does not appear to work very well for many people, in particular when reading long texts. Various surveys showed that when reading from a computer, most people would prefer to print out material and read it. 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. 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-top and hand-helds simply fail to match.

The usability 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. This disadvantage is recognized 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.

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. 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. 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. 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 when the software or hardware will become outdated. 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

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. 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. 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. 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. The books that help shape culture will be neglected because of this inability to read long prose.

Despite the tremendous utility and popularity of printed books, there are many reasons why we should now consider a partial shift away from the use of conventional paper-based books towards the greater use of publications that are based on the use of electronic media. Because of the rapidly emerging era of digital information and communications technologies, five basic issues can be taken into consideration; first, the problems associated with the ever increasing publication rate of both paper-based and electronic documents; second, the limitations imposed by the rates at which humans can read text-based material; third, the implications of 'media competition'; fourth, the speed and accuracy with which electronic material can be accessed; and fifth, the ways in which electronic material can be re-organized in dynamic ways in order to achieve more flexible presentation and access. Bearing in mind the five points raised above, it is becoming increasingly apparent that new ways of publishing books are needed. These new techniques should allow the flexible flow of information across different media forms in a dynamic way - to suit an individual's needs of the moment.

Information, thoughts, and ideas are useful whether they are presented on paper or by some other means. Methods of printing, of distribution, and of sales are being transformed. New technologies do not erase the past, but build on it. Sometimes new technologies supplant old ones. But, in the case of books, it can’t happen. 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 then it will be successful, particularly with new generations of readers who have grown up familiar with computers. In the future we will therefore need a comprehensive 'media strategy' which allows information to be moved from one medium to another as the needs of its users change.