1. EBOOKS & HANDHELDS IN ACADEMIA
Society for Scholarly Publishing 2009
DAVID SEAMAN
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE LIBRARY
BALTIMORE, 28 MAY 2009
2. CONTEXT
Despite the resurgence of interest in e-books and the
emergence of a new generation of reading devices, many
scholarly publishers dismiss them as gadgets on which
to read novels. But as e-books become more
mainstream--and as handhelds like the iPhone become
ubiquitous--they can no longer be ignored.
About Dartmouth: A private, four-year liberal arts college
open since 1769. A member of the Ivy League, with
approximately 4,100 undergraduate and 1,700
graduate students. Campus setting but many overseas
programs promote need for mobile access. Carnegie
Classification: "research university with very high
research activity."
3. WHAT IS AN EBOOK TODAY IN
ACADEMIA?
• Generally confused definition.
• Is it any book content on any screen? Sometimes.
• Is it book content coupled with hardware and/or
software that intentionally promotes a reading
experience over an extended time? Sometimes.
• Does it target pleasure reading as well as business
or academic/pedagogic use?
• Rarely supports basic paper-derived annotation
features.
• Aggressively non-social –read not share. Network
delivers but does not enhance. Solitary.
4. WHAT IS A HANDHELD IN ACADEMIA?
IMPRESSIONS FROM DARTMOUTH.
• Cell phone and iPod Touch predominate. iPhone still
the hot phone for students.
• iPhone/Touch “ surprisingly non-terrible”facility at
web browsing makes “ mobile”much more content.
http://metrics.admob.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/admob-mobile-metrics-april-09.pdf
5. WHAT IS A HANDHELD IN ACADEMIA?
IMPRESSIONS FROM DARTMOUTH.
• Blackberry and Palm Pre not seen much in the
undergrad population. Business and medicine uses.
• Texting, talking, music, Face Book, video, email,
shopping, photos, maps, web searching –more a “ social
life”than an “academic life”device? Not single use.
• Kindle/other book readers invisible in the student
landscape at present. “Kindle for students”experiment.
• “ Dad’ got one.”Kindle rivals Second Life as
My s
something old people wish students thought was cool?
5% of Kindle owners 20 or under; 8% over 70 years old.
6. OLD PERSON – SINGLE-USE DEVICE
YOUNG PERSON – LAPTOP AND IPOD
8. “WHOLE LIBRARY IN A
NUTSHELL.”
POPULAR SCIENCE,
1965
12,000 pages; 15 second
retrieval; in space!
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/mags/
PopularScience/2-1965/spce_library.jpg
9. PHASE ONE: 1970s-1996
• 1971 : Project Gutenberg –one book per year through 1991.
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext90/when12.txt
• 1981: Dictronics Publishing -- Dick Brass -- first dictionary-based
spelling checker and The Random House Electronic Thesaurus.
• Standard Generalized Markup Language –SGML (1986)
• Text Encoding Initiative –TEI (1987)
• HyperText Markup Language -- HTML (1990)
• Large commercial collections –Oxford English Dictionary and
Chadwyck-Healey literature collections (late 1980s/early 1990s)
• University Library etext production –Virginia; Michigan; Brown;
Rutgers; Oxford; Sydney, etc.
• Adobe PDF (1993)
• Franklin Readers: http://www.franklin.com/handhelds/bibles/
• Palm Pilot (1996): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_pilot
• Palm Press and Peanut Markup Language:
http://store.fictionwise.com/palm/
10. PHASE TWO 1997-2002
• Gemstar -- Softbook and RocketBook (1998-2001).
http://www.biblio-tech.com/BTR900/February_2000/e-book_update.html
• EveryBook. Twin screens for 2-page effect.
• Glassbook / Adobe ebook software (2000). MobiPocket.
• Stephen King: Riding the Bullet. March 2000. 400,000
downloads in the first 24 hours.
• August 2000: Microsoft Reader. http://www.microsoft.com/Reader/
• PocketPC (HP Jornada et al).
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/museum/personalsystems/0039/0039
threeqtr.html
• RosettaBooks: http://www.rosettabooks.com/
11. PHASE TWO IN ACADEMIA
• Major academic niche markets emerge –
computer science and medicine:
http://www.amsa.org/meded/choosingapda.cfm
• Some evidence of interest: Over 8.5 million free
ebook files from 2,100 publicly-available ebooks
at the University of Virginia Library's Etext
Center shipped 2000-2002 to over 100 countries
for MS Reader, Palm, and PDF:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/
• Successful experiments with XML/XSLT
production streams –value of standards.
12. LESSONS SUBLIME …
• Jeffrey Young. “ University That Reveres Tradition
A
Experiments With E-Books.”
http://chronicle.com/free/2001/05/2001051101t.htm
“ the classroom, students became on-the-spot historians, using the gadgets to home in on court
In
documents so they could argue for and against various interpretations of what happened in
Salem, Mass., more than 300 years ago.”
• Cathy Marshall (Microsoft) and Christine Ruotolo
(UVA). “Reading-in-the-Small: a study of reading on
small form factor devices.”
“Because the devices held the readings for the entire semester, the faculty and students were able to
spontaneously refer to materials from any part of the syllabus.”
“ found that the handhelds were a good platform for reading secondary materials, excerpts, and
We
shorter readings; they were used in a variety of circumstances where portability is important,
including collaborative situations such as the classroom. We also discuss the effectiveness of
annotation, search, and navigation functionality on the small form factor devices.”
13. … AND RIDICULOUS
• The 20th anniversary edition of Trivial Pursuit, the board game
that features the likes of Joey Buttafuoco, Tonya Harding,
Suzanne Sommer's ThighMaster, the 2000 Florida Presidential
election scandal, the Chia Pet, and the Smurfs, now contains the
following digital library question:
• Q: "What children's classic was the top free download of the
University of Virginia's digital library in its first year of
operation?”
• Alice in Wonderland
14. PHASE THREE: 2003-6: THE FALLOW YEARS
FOR HANDHELD EBOOK DEVICES
What went wrong?
ü Limited title selection;
ü Expensive and fragile “ one-trick”hardware;
ü Content that dies when a device does;
ü Overpricing;
ü Digital Rights Management that treats
customer as crook;
ü Lack of standards complicates production;
ü Focus on solitary pleasure reading over
classroom/academic activity (shared annotation,
for example, not a feature).
15. MEANWHILE BACK IN THE ACADEMY
(2003-2006)
• Steady increase in % library budget going to e-
resources.
• Increased willingness to buy ebook content, both
historical databases (includes Early English Books
Online and Eighteenth-Century Collections Online;
Chadwyck-Healey; Alexander Street Press) and
contemporary titles (Safari; medicine; business, etc).
• Google Books and library content available en masse
but fairly mobile-hostile.
• Increased local library production, including scholarly
monographs and journals.
16. PHASE FOUR: 2006-PRESENT
• E-ink research comes to market. Return of the
single use device: http://www.eink.com/technology/howitworks.html
ü iRex iLiad (July 2006)
ü Sony Reader (September 2006)
ü Kindle (November 2007); Kindle 2 (March
2009); Kindle DX (Summer 2009)
• Much more content of all sorts for all types of
user.
• Mobile devices become ubiquitous with students
and grow in power –audio, video, motion, GPS
services.
19. “EBOOKS ARRIVE.”CAROL TENOPIR. LIBRARY
JOURNAL. FEB 1, 2008.
•“The programs at two recent conferences (the
Charleston Conference and London Online) confirm
that ebooks have established themselves in libraries.
While the trade and consumer book markets still
struggle to find an affordable and compelling ebook
reader, library users have embraced the ebooks
connected to the library e-collection and accessible via
the PC or laptop they typically use.”
• Ebooks respond to some library needs –storage;
damaged books; interlibrary loans; remote users.
• Escrow services lacking (except Elsevier/Portico).
20. OCLC NETLIBRARY SURVEY OF UK
LIBRARIES, NOVEMBER 2008
•“ Three-quarters of academic libraries and half of
public libraries that responded intend to increase
their collections of eBooks over the next year, in spite
of the current fiscal climate.”
• “ the academic libraries who responded to the
Of
survey, half indicated that their use of eBooks was to
support their core reading lists in various subject
areas –the main ones being Business / Management
(13%), Medicine / Health (9%) Education (6%) and
Engineering (5%).”
21. UK SUPERBOOK USER STUDY
•“ What do faculty and students really think about e-
books?” Ian Rowlands, David Nicholas, Hamid R.
Jamali, and Paul Huntington. CIBER, London, 2007.
• 3,000 selected ebooks. 1,800 faculty and students at
UCL respond to survey on use and perceptions of
ebooks. Also used log analysis and interviews.
• About half were current ebook users; 61% found them
by means other than the library catalog; strong
preference for reading on screen (undergrads most
likely group); associated ebooks with work/study.
•“ Book discovery … emerges as a critical focus for
service delivery and enhancement” .
23. JISC: THE NATIONAL E-BOOKS OBSERVATORY
PROJECT
• –36 course text e-books freely available to all UK
Higher Education institutions
• –Over 48,000 responses to benchmarking surveys
carried out in January 2008 and in January 2009
• The most important benefit of the e-book is 24/7
access -- Use of e-books over 24 hours: 25% of use
between 6pm and 8am
• Use of e-books over the year: Sharp peaks and deep
declines –“ DRM systems need to recognise that use of
e-books … is concentrated and in line with the
academic timetable and at certain times of the day.”
• Non-linear use –dipping in and out.
http://www.jiscebooksproject.org/
26. ACCELERANT: APPLE
• iPhone/Touch as ebook reader (Kindle reader; Stanza)
-- 2 million free EPUB files from feedbooks.com to
Stanza already.
• Rumored Apple Tablet/NetBook touch screen device
(see fake Apple ebook above).
http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20090311/apple-netbook-actually-an-e-book/
• Rumored Apple ebook store: "It doesn't matter how
good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't
read anymore,”[Jobs] said. "Forty percent of the
people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.”
“The Passion of Steve Jobs.”By John Markoff. New York Times, January 15, 2008
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/the-passion-of-steve-jobs/
27. ACCELERANT: STANDARDS
l Standards –can drive down cost if publishing to
multiple platforms.
l Can allow experimentation with niche markets.
l Can allow aggregation of content from multiple
sources on a given device (desirable for customer at
least).
l ePub –maturing out of OEB (1999); XML packaging
model.
l Text Encoding Initiative / METS interoperability.
28. ACCELERANT: GOOGLE
• Google. 7 million books, many scanned from
academic libraries.
• Absorbing what it means to have our entire stacks
and storage library discoverable through search.
• Post settlement: immense, instant discovery and
online full-text access to deep academic content if
cost allows. We’ gonna want this.
re
• 500,000 public-domain titles from academic library
collections released free in ePub format for Sony
Reader (March 2009).
• Caveat: page images awkward on mobile devices.
29. ACCELERANT: STUDENTS (including
K12).
• Connectivity and ebooks: annotate, share, comment,
blog, link (http://www.goodreads.com/).
• Need more innovative content behaviors to drive
innovative use.
• Textbooks –need tougher, cheaper hardware, but they
are ready to use handheld textbooks (see UK study
earlier).
• Single use handheld device a hard sell unless
mandated. Ditto content tied to a single device.
30. SUMMATION
• Mobile devices deeply embedded in student culture.
• High tolerance for reading online.
• High expectation of searchable content available now.
• Textbook, monograph, technical guide well suited to
the medium –not literary, pleasure reading mostly.
• Need annotate/share/discuss features built in.
• Need standards-based content; escrow services.
• Libraries and our users are highly willing market for
more ebooks on mobile devices as part of our
collections and service offerings.
31. Thank you.
David Seaman
Associate Librarian for Information Management
6025 Baker Library, Rm 115
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755
603-646-9930
david.seaman@dartmouth.edu
33. WHAT IS A LIBRARIAN ON AN IPHONE?
• Wish you could shush the people around
you while you try to concentrate on an
important task?
• Want to wake up at the slightest noise
around?
• Librarian for the iPhone does all of this!
Simply set the audio level sensitivity and
tap start to begin.
• Once the noise surrounding you exceeds
the set sensitivity level, the librarian will
shush those around you.
• http://www.guidanceisinternal.com/
See presentation by Megan Fox, Simmons College,
for more on mobile library services.
http://web.simmons.edu/~fox/mobile
http://web.simmons.edu/~fox/pda/cil1_09_fox_mobile.pdf
