Welcome to the E-book info page! Where you can learn about E-books!
E-books
Probably as a result of the digital era, more and more books are becoming electronic books (e-books). E-books are coming to be a new trend in the world of information technologies. E-books are said to offer a wide range of interesting teaching and learning possibilities, yet the e-book technology is just beginnig to be explored. There is still lack of consensus in regards to the real advantages of e-books over regular paper books.
Due to the space limitations faced by many libraries, e-books appear to be an efficient means to store and organize information. Thousands of books can be stored in just one computer that can be accsessed by many people. In addition, e-books can provide their users with up-to-date content and full-time availability. For this reason, e-book collections are being more frequently accessed than regular book collections. In this sense, e-books support the mission and vision of libraries in the digital age (Rosy, 20002).
Libraries are nowadays changing from being merely warehouses to becoming information portals with the use of e-books (Connaway, 2003). E-books offer many advantages to users. They are easy to access and provide hyper connection among other books. What is more, e-books are less likely to be lost, stolen, or damaged. Nontheless, libraries must develop policies, procedures, and technologies to deal with e-books and manage this electronic challenge successfully.
Electronic literature can be of great help to the process of teaching and learning. When students register courses at the university, they are required to purchase many books that are discarded at the end of the term. This waste of resouces could be minimized by using e-books. In a research study conducted over one semester with 24 college students, Simon (2001) analyzes the effects of replacing standard textbooks with e-books. To do this, the course reading material was converted into digital format. This study found that most students liked the special features included in e-books, such as using glossaries, bookmarking, highlighting, and annotating. Besides, most students in this study said that for ebooks to be useful tools, they must have the easy-to-use features of the printed book.
In inspite of the obvious advantages of e-books, electronic books still present some weaknesses that deter people from using them. Mooney (2001) refers to the term “interoperability” to highlight the current problems present in e-books. Interoperability basically means compatibility. Many software companies have developed their own e-book technologies which are not compatible among themselves in most cases (Wilson, 2003). Therefore, part of the future success of e-books lies in standardizing their formats to allow full access by users.
Some e-books are provided freely by organizations or individual persons. Berglund, Morrison, Wilson, and Wynne (2004) inspected hundreds of free e-books on the Internet in order to assess their advantages and shortcomings. They found out that many free e-book resources are run by amateurs and not by academic institutions. Consequently, the quality of e-books depends, in most cases, on who administers the web sites which store them. The main problem with those e-books is their many different formats and lack of update owing to copyright restrictions. Only books that are no longer copyrighted can be digitalized and distributed freely.
For copyrighted e-books, price constitutes an issue for users. Jatz (2002) asserts that most e-books have the same price as paper books. Thus , this fact discourage people from buying e-books because they do not find that convenient. Jatz also refers to different models to implement the e-book technology in libraries. For instance, libraries and net publishers could work together to provide students with access to e-books. Jatz exemplifies this with the physical library metaphor. Only one copy of a book could be accessed at a time. This will, of course, depend on how many ebooks or electronic licenses are purchased by a library. In addition, course materials could be offered as e-books, and students could download them from their university library web sites.
References
Berglund, Y., Morrison, A., Wilson, R., & Wynne, M. (2004). An Investigation into
Free E-books. Retrieved October 5, 2007 from
http://eprints.ouls.ox.ac.uk/archive/00000732/01/FreeEbooks.pdf
Connaway, L. S. (2003). Electronic books (e-books): Current trends and future
directions. [Electronic version]. DESIDOC Bulletin of Information
Technology, 23 (1), 13-18.
Rosy, R. L. (2002). E-books for libraries and patrons: Two years of experience.
[Electronic version]. Liber Quaterly, 2 (2), 228- 233.
Jatz, R. (2002). E-books and new library service models: An analysis of the impact
of e-book technology on academic libraries. ITAL: Information Technology
and Libraries. Retrieved October 5, 2007 from
http://news.ala.org/ala/lita/litapublications/ital/2002jantz.cfm
Mooney, S. (2001). Interoperability: Digital rights management and the emarging e-
book environment. [ Electronic version]. D-Lib Magazine,. 7 (1).
Simon, E. J. (2001). Electronic textbooks: A pilot study of student e-reading habits.
Future of Print Media Journal. Retrieved October 5, 2007 from
http://www.xs4all.nl/~ppintaal/e_documentatie/e-textbooks-01.pdf
Wilson, R. (2003). E-Book Readers in Higher Education. Retrieved October 5,
2007 from
http://eprints.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/2510/01/wilson_ebookreaders.pdf
