This document discusses the limitations of current ebook platforms and reading interfaces, which provide poor user experiences with limited screen space for viewing content, few annotation and printing options, and closed systems that make sharing notes difficult. It advocates for an open ebook platform that allows for better interaction with content and communication between readers without manipulation by third parties like publishers.

1. Ebooks
assessing usage: reading, research and reference usage
and engagement

2. Or,
Why I hate, and love, Jaron Lanier

3. Or,
why we need an open platform for (scholarly) reading

4. I am:
Hugh McGuire | @hughmcguire |
hugh@rebus.foundation
Rebus Foundation: https://rebus.foundation
Pressbooks: https://pressbooks.com
LibriVox: https://librivox.org

6. “The platforms are terrible. The user interface is bad. You get into a system,
you have to click five or six times to get into it… [Once] you get into the
system, even if you have a wide-screen monitor… the viewing of the content
itself is limited to half the screen… It looks like it’s from the 90s. There’s
limitations on printing, if you can print at all. The annotation is either
non-existent or terrible, and it’s not hierarchical or smart in any way, and
getting those annotations back out (because they have locked it down,
because [publishers] view it… as a workaround to get the content out…) is
near impossible and not functional. So you feel like you’re sort of looking at
this thing through a digital glass box that you can’t touch or interact with.”

7. “We cannot have a society in which if two
people wish to communicate, the only way
that can happen is if it’s financed by a third
person who wishes to manipulate them.”
-- Jaron Lanier

8. hugh@rebus.foundation
https://rebus.ink/