Ebooks: an early 2010 sketch

Electronic books and the liberal arts campus: an early 2010 survey
Bryan Alexander
National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/02/12/eread-economic-report-president

Plan for today’s session
E-book readers
E-books
Ecosystems and decisions
Upcoming in 2010
Throughout: campus cases

1. e-book readers

Plus multipurpose devicesused for reading

Advantages
Example of Kindle
Cost savings per book
Weight savings
Subscription updates
Dictionary
Public domain and other texts by cable
Green (less paper)
Greater purchasing of books
E-ink

Problems so far
Continuing with the Kindle:
Limitations of device interfaces
Hardware cost
Annotation issues
e-book-specific:
DRM
Title availability
Visual quality
Multimedia
Sharing limitations

2. e-books
History: back to the 1970s
Campus history: e-reserves

File formats
txt, html, pdf
Epub
Kindle (.azw)
Fictionbook, Mobipocket
Microsoft Reader (.lit)

ePub example (EPUBReader Firefox plugin)

File formats
Greater interactivity:
Wikis
Multimedia (Nook, Vook)
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/04/penguins-ipad-formatted-books-shown-off-making-waves/

Major e-book projects
Humanities E-Book 2,200
Internet Archive “over 30,000 free ebooks”
Project Gutenberg “1,893,588 texts”
Connexionsdepends on definition

Humanities E-Book (HEB)

Internet Archive texts

Project Gutenberg

Connexions

…and Google Books, depending

E-reader applications
Examples:
Stanza (pictured)
Calibre
EPUBReader (Firefox plugin)
Microsoft Reader

Ebook advantages
Greener
Interactivity, multimedia affordances
Faster publication cycle
Lower cost
Flexible presentation (font, etc)

Ebook disadvantages
Users uncomfortable with digital
Publishers’ nerves with copyright
Multimedia costs
Wiki problems

3. Ecosystems and decisions
Combining devices, format, services, and business model
Kindle: Amazon store
Nook: Barnes and Noble store
iPad: iTunes book section

Integration with other media
Text -> podcast (Gutenberg->Librivox)

Campus decision points
File format
Device tie-in
For free or fee?
(http://www.laits.utexas.edu/fi/)

Campus points of implementation
Library building (Fairleigh Dickinson)
Campus bookstore
Library portal
Courseware
Open Web
http://web.mit.edu/viz/EM/flash/E&M_Master/E&M.swf

4. Looking ahead in 2010
Vendors expanding market
Format expansion and experimentation
More academic examples described

Much riding on the iPad and tablets

Your turn
Are you seeing ebooks already on campus?

Your turn
What ebook implementations (if any) do you foresee for 2010?

More resources
ELI, 7 Things You Need to Know About E-books, http://www.educause.edu/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutEBook/156823
“, “ “ “ “ “ “ “ e-readers, http://www.educause.edu/Resources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutERead/200539
Trina Marmarelli, Martin Ringle, “The Reed College Kindle Study” http://web.reed.edu/cis/about/kindle_pilot/Reed_Kindle_report.pdf

Sources for free ebooks
Internet Text Archive, http://www.archive.org/details/texts
Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/
HEB (if your campus subscribes), http://www.humanitiesebook.org/
Connexions, http://cnx.org/
Online Books Page (Penn), http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
BookBoon, http://bookboon.com/us/student/info/about

Even more resources
NITLE blog, Techne
http://blogs.nitle.org
Horizon Report
http://www.nmc.org/horizon
Bryan’s research Twitter
http://twitter.com/bryanalexander

Ebooks: an early 2010 sketch

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