Electronic books and the liberal

arts campus: an early 2010

survey

Bryan AlexanderNational Institute for Technology in Liberal Education

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

Plan for today’s session

1. E-book readers2. E-books3. Ecosystems and decisions4. 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”• Connexions depends on definition

Humanities E-Book (HEB)

Internet Archive texts

Internet Archive texts

Project Gutenberg

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 decisionsCombining 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, Technehttp://blogs.nitle.org

Horizon Reporthttp://www.nmc.org/horizon

Bryan’s research Twitterhttp://twitter.com/bryanalexander