E-book readers are portable devices on which e-books can be downloaded and read. Current norm-of-the-art seems capable of rendering black and white text, with little formatting (for example, no two-page spreads), and no quality graphics. One of the readers can display color, but e-books themselves are not currently taking advantage of the color capabilities, so at the moment it is probably not worth paying more and carrying a heavier device for the limited advantages. According to all of the librarians who spoke up at the conference and are currently circulating e-book readers, patrons really like them, and find them easy to read. Susan Gibbons, Digital Initiatives Librarian at the University of Rochester, NY, brought samples of many e-book readers for the participants to inspect first hand (see the end of this document for a list of readers). Michael Seagroves, of Palm, Inc., discussed innovations in the Palm OS that could make it easier to read books on the Palm, despite its small size. An advantage of Palm devices is that many people have them already, and they do many other things as well, so having books to read on them just makes them more versatile. The e-book readers, although capable of storing several books in one unit, are single-use devices. Many speakers mentioned that e-textbooks is the next wave. All major corporate players in the e-book arena plan to have some sort of e-textbook offering available by this fall.
At the moment, popular adult fiction and non-fiction dominate the list of available e-book titles. Not much is available in the way of research materials. Also there is very little available for children, young adults, and in foreign languages. There are some e-book-only titles, such as Stephen King's Riding the bullet. A few enhanced e-book titles exist, but not many. One such is Pride before the fall: the trials of Bill Gates and the end of the Microsoft era by John Heilemann which includes US vs. Microsoft legal documents, including Gates' deposition.
Susan Gibbons spoke about some of the challenges facing libraries that want to circulate e-book readers. E- books, when downloaded, are locked into one specific device (not just a specific model and make of device), and each title on each reader has to be paid for, so patrons cannot select specific titles to take home on the reader. Susan's library decided to create "theme readers" on which types of titles, such as mystery, biography, etc. were loaded. Also, the check out and check in of e-book readers is time-consuming because users have to be acquainted with the many parts of the reader when it's on its way out, and the special parts all need to be checked, and the reader "cleaned up" (users can make notes in the e-book) when the device is returned. Susan, and others, also noted that a library really needs to be able to use a credit card to purchase e-books. To download e-books onto these devices, an analog phone line is generally needed. Many libraries have digital phones installed which can create problems in obtaining the e-book titles. All agreed that the e- book device market is aimed at the individual consumer and that vendors have no concept of, and little interest in the library market. Although none of the libraries represented by speakers had any problems with lost or damaged devices, they all made policiies about how to handle the issue if it should come up. Only one library (Amherst (NH) Public decided on a policy of making users pay to replace the reader if it was lost or damaged. Cataloging these devices and/or the titles on the devices remains a challenge.
Use special software on your desktop computer or laptop, or hand-held device to download and read e-books. On the plus side, you don't need another separate device. If you have a laptop, you're likely carrying it around with you anyway. Some people have expressed concerns about eye strain when reading a book cover to cover on a computer, but no one seemed to have any data about how much of a problem that is or isn't. Adobe and Microsoft have each developed a special font (CoolType and Clear-Type, respectively) to improve readability. Susan Gibbons claimed that the CoolType font really does make a difference. All e-book reading software is available free of charge; it is the content that users are expected to pay for. Tom Diaz made a very good case for Adobe software. Their ability to reproduce the look of a printed book, including colors, graphics, and two-page spreads, plus the ubiquity of their software made them seem like strong contenders in this market. However, as more than one librarian pointed out, these are all proprietary formats. There was some talk by the corporate speakers about the Open e-Book Forum for developing standards, but on top of the sharable base, each company will manipulate the file/e-text to make it work with their software, or on their device alone.
Digital rights management is a big issue. All of these e-book companies need content of interest to users in order to be viable, but publishers want to ensure that content is not given away digitally. It's a tug of war.
Respectfully submitted by Amy Benson, conference attendee.