An e-book is a book whose text is stored in digital form and can be read on a PC or a handheld reading device. Since most books today are created on word processors and typesetting systems, it is easy for a publisher to create an electronic version. Older books that exist only in printed form can be scanned and converted to text .
An e-book has a number of advantages over its printed counterpart. The text can be searched and can include links to sections or even to documents on the World Wide Web. Reading software or devices can easily enlarge text for the visually handicapped, or read it in a synthesized voice. Since only bits need to be moved around, e-books save trees as well as the cost of manufacturing, transporting, ware-housing, and displaying conventional books.
There are some disadvantages. Many people are not comfortable reading large amounts of text at a computer. Portable reading devices that may be more convenient are relatively expensive and not standardized. There is no uni-versal format for e-books, so some software or readers may not be able to read all e-books.
As of 2008 the e-book landscape may be in the process of being reshaped. Amazon’s Kindle book reader is the lat-est attempt to marry e-books to handheld devices. Weigh-ing less than a paperback book, the Kindle can download books and other content directly over a cellular broadband connection and display text using an “electronic ink” tech-nology that simulates print. Amazon is offering a large selection of e-books including electronic versions of current best sellers at prices several dollars below that of the hard-back version.
Authors and publishers, like other content creators, may have to deal with the illicit copying and distribution of text in digital form, as happened with the last Harry Potter book even before its publication in 2007. Some e-books contain a form of copy protection (see digital rights management). This, as with video and music, can lead to compatibility problems.
A number of e-publishers as well as conventional pub-lishers now offer books online, most commonly as pdf (portable document format) files. A hybrid service, “publish on demand,” keeps the book on file and prints and ships bound copies as they are ordered, eliminating the problem of remainders. In the future, so-called digital paper (a thin membrane that can display text), may be used to create a more book like reading experience.
Digital Libraries
A digital library is to e-books what a conventional library is to printed books. Sometimes called an electronic library or virtual library, digital libraries can be created in a variety of ways. Printed books can now be scanned and digitized rapidly. Google has said that it can scan 3,000 volumes a day using a proprietary system. (This is not necessary, of course, for books that were originally cre-ated in digital form.)
Advantages of digital libraries include the following:
• There is never a shortage of copies or the need for a reader to wait for access.
• many digital libraries allow full searching of the text of all volumes. Libraries can also use a common data format (such as “Open Archives.”) to make their mate-rial searchable throughout the Internet.
• many older, hard-to-find books can be made more “discoverable” and accessible.
Project Gutenberg is one of the oldest and best-known digital library projects, dating back to 1971. Most of the collection consists of scanned or transcribed texts of public domain (no longer subject to copyright) books. As of late 2007, Project Gutenberg had more than 17,000 different titles in its collection.
Of course more recent books are covered by copyright. In order to include copyrighted books in a digital library, some sort of compensation to the copyright holder gener-ally needs to be made, and it is unclear how that might be implemented in a way that preserves free access.
There are also what might be called “digital pseudo-libraries” such as Google Book Search. Google has been scanning part or all of the collections of universities such as Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford as well as the New York Pub-lic Library. Google provides full access to public domain books (or those for which permission has been obtained from the publisher). For copyrighted books there is a lim-ited ability to search by keyword and view a limited num-ber of pages. Amazon.com’s “Search inside the Book” works rather similarly, but only with books for which the pub-lisher has granted permission.
Google’s initiative has aroused some controversy because, according to traditional practice, someone wanting access to a copyrighted work beyond “fair use” is supposed to obtain permission. Google has reversed this presumption, allowing publishers who do not want their material to be available to opt out. The Authors Guild of America and the Association of American Publishers have separately sued Google for copy-right infringement. Google argues that the limited amount of text provided for copyrighted books falls within the fair use provisions of copyright law. The authors and publish-ers, however, point to the fact that Google is copying the whole text of the book in order to allow for searching.
If the legal issues can be settled in such a way as to allow robust digital libraries, the benefits for researchers will be considerable. Google already offers a “my library” feature that users can use to search for books they already know and organize and search them digitally.
No comments:
Post a Comment