Information Outlook, Vol. 5, no. 2, February 2001
Are e-books in Your Future?
by Susan E. Randolph
Susan Randolph is a candidate, Post-Masters Certificate School of Library and Information Science at Catholic University of America. She may be reached at psard@worldnet.att.net.
Who would choose to read an e-book rather than a printed book?
The visually challenged for the adjustable type size and font of e-books.
The user of technical manuals for the bookmarking, hyperlinking, and annotating capabilities. The student and traveler for the portability of multiple titles. The researcher for keyword searching. The late night reader for the optional backlighting that enables reading in the dark. The distance learner who needs access to materials twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And the forgetful reader for the ability to retrace the path of what was read and find the meaning of a word without leaving the reading chair. With e-book multimedia capabilities around the corner, potential users come to mind: the language student who wants to hear the pronunciation of a word; the model builder who would like to see in a 3-D rendering exactly where to put the next piece; the reader of a Balanchine biography, who wishes to see a clip of a ballet performance. Who would choose to read an e-book? The very users academic, public, school, and special libraries serve. But do the most recent versions of e-books have a future in libraries?
E-text---the Foundation of e-books
The content of e-books is digitized text. Michael Hart initiated a pioneering effort to digitize text in 1971 when he digitized the Declaration of Independence. His Project Gutenberg has now digitized more than 2,500 titles. These titles are in plain American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) text, and can be read on any computer system. Project Gutenberg's goal is to provide electronic text of all public domain titles shortly after they enter the public domain.
E-text makes it possible for librarians to obtain out-of-print books and materials that are not conventionally published because the audience is too small. Commercial vendors, such as Replica Books and Ingram's Lightning Source, store fully marked-up digital text or scanned page images and use recently developed high-speed laser printers to produce bound books, on demand, one at a time.
E-text has also been available for years on CD-ROM and diskette, media that enhance the text with search and multimedia capabilities that allow users to explore subjects in a way not supported by printed books. However, CD-ROM and diskette books have failed to flourish, primarily because of initial high production costs and the lack of a mass market for products other than reference works and games. Some libraries have added CD e-books to their collections and circulate them as they do audio CDs. Diskettes have not, however, found a secure niche
in library collections. Walt Crawford, writing in the September 2000 American Libraries, expects the diskette form of e-book to fade away.
Two new web-based delivery mechanisms for e-text are on the market, however, and are slowly finding their way into libraries. Like the CD-ROMs and diskettes that preceded them, they add features to make the electronic form more than a transcription. Unlike CD-ROMs and diskettes, however, their e-text content is available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They fall into two categories: closed, dedicated device e-books, and open, multipurpose device e-books.
Closed, Dedicated Device e-books
Closed, dedicated device e-books require an e-book appliance that can be used only to read e-books. Furthermore, the content is locked to the e-book appliance to which it is downloaded from the web. E-Books cannot be transferred to another appliance from the same vendor, or to the appliance of another vendor. Users cannot print any portion of the text. A user who borrows a closed e-book from the library, rather than buying the e-book and appliance, does not have any hour/any day access.
Rocket and SoftBook dominate the market for closed, dedicated device e-books. Gemstar International Group Ltd., the publisher of TV Guide, owns both Rocket and SoftBook, which it acquired from NuvoMedia and SoftBook Press, respectively, in January 2000. According to the August 2000 Library Journal, Gemstar plans to market both products and aim them at different market segments. It has also teamed up with Thomson Multimedia to produce "tens of millions" of e-book appliances, according to the April 15, 2000, Library Journal. Improvements in both products are in the pipeline.
Rocket and SoftBook Compared
Rocket and SoftBook display text and related images on term "reader" is applied to open e-book software, as it is to the dedicated appliances used to read closed e-books.
Some vendors, such as netLibrary, deliver content solely via the web. Adobe, on the other hand, delivers e-books via the web and as Acrobat files on CD-ROM. Microsoft, which is poised to enter the open e-book market, will deliver content as Reader files on CD-ROM and through the web, including the Barnes & Noble site. Users of e-books delivered via theweb have access to content twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, whether or not they are using a library as an intermediary.
REB1100 and REB1200 Compared.
The REB1100 and REB1200 display text and related images on medium-resolution screens. Printed books have a resolution of 1,200 dots per inch (dpi), although computer screens with resolution above 300 dpi are considered as readable as paper. Rocket eBook has a resolution of 105 dpi, and Softbook a resolution of 72 dpi. Not surprisingly, some users complain of eyestrain. Rocket is about the size of a small hardcover book and weighs about as much as four apples. SoftBook is about the size of a legal tablet and weighs about as much as ten apples. Both have rechargeable batteries, but SoftBook's battery holds a charge for only five hours, while Rocket holds a charge for twenty. Rocket can carry up to 40,000 pages of text (well over 100 average-length novels), whereas SoftBook can carry up to 50,000 pages. Users can purchase memory upgrades for both. Rocket titles are transferred via IBM-compatible PC or Macintosh and can be purchased at Barnes & Noble online, selected B & N stores, and Powell's Books online. The transfer from computer to Rocket Reader takes two or three minutes per title. SoftBook titles, purchased from the Soft-Bookstore, are transferred via a built-in modem. The web site www.ebookconnections.com provides a list of e-book publishers. As of May 2000, SoftBook claimed content of about 1,700 books, each costing about what libraries pay for wholesale print titles and Rocket claimed more than 2,400 books, which on average were slightly more expensive than SoftBook titles. Both Rocket and SoftBook can convert Project Gutenberg titles. SoftBook offers thirty-four periodicals, but no built-in dictionary, whereas Rocket has a dictionary, but only ten periodicals. As of April 2000, Rocket cost less ($199/$269); SoftBook more ($600/$300 plus $20 per month content package for twenty-four months).
Open, Multipurpose Device e-books
The vendors of open, multipurpose device e-books produce software rather than appliances. Open e-books are read on computers of all types, from desktop to hand-held, including personal digital assistants (PDAs). The books delivered via the web have access to content twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, whether or not they are using a library as an intermediary.
Some publishers of scientific material in e-books have found that clear presentation of formulas require display improvements. Microsoft has incorporated a Clear Type Font in its soon to be released Microsoft Reader, which it claims will dramatically increase the display capability of PCs with liquid crystal display (LCD) screens. The use of the Clear Type Font should also reduce eyestrain.
Microsoft, Glassbook, Librius and other vendors of open e-books, in cooperation with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, support the development of standards that enable content to be accessed on various platforms and devices. A standard format for displaying e-books, the Open eBook Publication Structure, was released in 1999. It uses a combination of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and eXtensible Markup Language (XML) that allows publishers to provide their content without having to reformat it for each reading system.
Open e-books in Libraries
Glassbook has developed the Glassbook Library Server, a web-based system for libraries that want to lend e-books to patrons. The E-book collection manager facilitates purchase of e-books with accompanying bibliographic information. The E-book circulation manager verifies the authenticity of the patron's Glassbook Reader software and downloads an encrypted copy of the e-book. The e-book "disappears" from the patron's device automatically at the end of the loan period because of a voucher the circulation manager delivers to the device at the time of loan. No overdue notices, no fines, no missing books!
NetLibrary has also pursued the library market. Academic libraries form the core of its clientele, and it has acquired the distribution rights to trade, reference, academic, and scholarly books from about 180 publishers, many of which are academic presses. As its client base has grown to include public libraries, it has added popular titles like the Complete Idiot's Guides to its collection. The netLibrary collection numbers over 32,000 titles and is growing at the rate of over 2,000 titles per month.
NetLibrary allows libraries to purchase sets of books on behalf of their patrons. Libraries are thus able to offer more resources to patrons for the cost of the materials only, without the cost of additional shelf space and materials processing. Patrons register at the netLibrary site, where they have access to the copyrighted material purchased by their library and a collection of about 3,000 public domain e-books. Each e-book can be read by only one person at a time from that library, unless the library purchases access to additional "copies". The user "borrows" the e-book for a defined period established by the library. At the end of the period, the e-book automatically disappears from the user's computer. Users may copy selected pages. However, a user who attempts to print out an entire book will receive a copyright infringement warning, and the system will cut the user off after about three warnings.
NetLibrary Links to Other Library Vendors
In a move that will make e-books more attractive to libraries, netLibrary has recently reached agreements with several established library vendors. NetLibrary has placed copies of its titles with the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) to hold in escrow against the possibility of bankruptcy or other calamities. To enrich its offerings, it will access the table of contents in Blackwell Book Services' database to make chapters of books available. It has formed a partnership with EBSCO for the integration of e-books into the large amount of digital content EBSCO provides. EBSCO will concentrate distribution of the e-books in public, junior, and community college libraries. NetLibrary has also reached an agreement with Innovative Interfaces, which will enhance its acquisitions interface and Innopac and Millennium online catalogs to support netLibrary's e-books. The acquisitions interface will notify a library about new netLibrary e-books as they become available, and facilitate payment for and tracking of e-books the library selects. The online catalogs will have enhanced record displays to implement links to e-book content on netLibrary's site. At some
future date, library patrons might be able to use their existing library account on the Innovative Interfaces system to check out e-books without having to create a separate account in netLibrary's system.
NetLibrary has also recently acquired peanutpress.com, which specializes in providing reformatted trade publisher titles for Palm operating system devices and Windows CE and Pocket PC devices. NetLibrary and peanutpress plan to integrate their holdings and give patrons of libraries with e-book collections the option of downloading titles to their hand-held devices. Libraries will be able to serve patrons who want to read e-books on a hand-held device, without the headache of lending hardware.
Open e-books in Arlington Public Libraries
The Arlington County Public Library (ACPL), Arlington, Virginia participated in a netLibrary pilot project that ended in December 2000. The pilot program was by netLibrary as part of it's campaign to extend the reach of its product to public libraries and was welcomed by the ACPL, according to Maureen Karl, materials management division chief of the library, as an opportunity to expand the resources the library could make available to its users. During the pilot, ACPL patrons had access to over 1500 non-fiction netLibrary titles, chosen by netLibrary, that included computer titles, medical and government information sources, and travel books. Karl reported that computer and medical titles are borrowed most often. Several Cliffs Notes titles have also circulated. During the pilot, titles in the pilot program circulated for twenty-four hours. However, netLibrary enables libraries to set up lending categories. For example, reference books might circulate for twenty-four hours, computer titles for three days, and travel books for two weeks.
The ACPL alerted its patrons to the netLibrary collection through its web page and by including netLibrary titles in the library's online public access catalog (OPAC) where a sub-field in the machine-readable cataloging (MARC) record identifies the title as an e-book. Patrons alos learned about the e-Book pilot program through articles in the Washington Post, the Arlington Journal, and in the Friends of the ACPL newsletter.
Do in-library readers of netLibrary e-books, or in-library users of any other web-based service for that matter, tie up terminals and inadvertently block patrons who need to use the terminals to consult the library's OPAC? The library has addressed this possibility by labeling some terminals as "short-term use only", to reserve them for OPAC searching. To obviate the need for policing, it has also "locked down" the browser software on these terminals so that patrons cannot use the OPAC as a springboard to other sites on the web.
Some of the library's periodical indexes and basic reference sources are web-based. Because they contain imbedded links to other sites, they cannot be "locked down" the way the catalog can, and therefore cannot be included on the terminals reserved for OPAC searching. The library staff considers these web-based tools part of basic library service that should be readily available to patrons. It is concerned that patrons needing access to these tools will find themselves competing with patrons who use termials for long periods to read e-Books. The library's response to the problem has been to increase the number of terminals.
Is the Arlington County Public Library committed to e-books? "Definitely," is Karl's response. She notes that Digital Owl has signed an agreement with Baker & Taylor to market e-books will make e-Book acquisition easier. She sees merit in e-book training manuals on portable devices. She is also intrigued by the idea of creating customized travel books, an application that travel publishers Frommer and Lonely Planet see in the future. She reports that the library is "finalizing a consortial purcahse o fnetLibrary titles together with Fairfax, Loudouin, and Prince William Counties in Virginia, that will provide an indepth collection of computer, technology, and business books for use by our combined populations. In addition, we are purchasing a popular titles collection of our own, and plan for both to be available by January 2001." Will the library offer dedicated device e-books? Karl is weighing the large commitment of resources dedicated device e-books require against the anticipated return in use. NetLibrary's recent acquisition of peanutpress should affect any decision to offer dedicated device e-books. Will the library continue to offer netLibrary e-books when the pilot program ends? The library is weighing this option, too.
Closed e-books in Libraries
Algonquin Area Public Library, in Illinois, is one of several libraries that has chosen to offer dedicated device e-books to its patrons. Roberta Burk, in the April 15, 2000, Library Journal, reports that the library circulates seven Rocket Readers. It chose the less expensive Rocket, rather than SoftBook, because it was the way "to get the most for our money".
The library owns fifty-eight RocketEditions, which it purchased from Barnes & Noble online. Several hours after charging its purchase with a credit card, it received an e-mail message with the uniform resource locator (URL) from which to download the e-books. Each of the seven readers requires a separate e-mail account. The library downloaded the texts to the office personal computer (PC) hard drive, using RocketLibrarian software. The e-books can also be downloaded to a Macintosh. The RocketEditions remain on the PC's hard drive, but are encrypted and cannot be read until transferred to the Rocket Reader. If a reader is lost or titles accidentally deleted, the titles purchased for that reader can be transferred to another reader without additional charge. Under normal circumstances, however, e-books cannot be transferred from reader to reader.
The library plans to use the RocketLibrarian software to convert the ASCII text of public domain Project Gutenberg titles to the HTML required by Rocket Reader and eventually offer more than 100 titles per reader. It has assigned titles by genre to the readers, so that one Rocket Reader has science fiction titles, a second mystery, and a third adventure. A fourth reader has titles in the Stephanie Plum series, and a fifth the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series. This is a boon for fans of these books, who can rarely find all the titles in the series at one time. Two Rocket Readers contain nonfiction.
The Chicago Public Library groups e-books by the following genres for nine of its Rocket Readers: fiction, mystery, science fiction, romance, biography, non-fiction, adventure, and classics. A tenth reader is devoted to the titles of Mary Higgins Clark. Another possible arrangement is to group e-books with a similar theme on a reader, guiding patrons from a chosen title to similar titles they might equally enjoy. For the savings in shelf space and processing charges, Rocket Readers might be the best place for titles of ephemeral value by popular authors.
Cataloging e-books
One advantage of grouping the e-book titles by genre is that the collection on each Rocket Reader can be cataloged as an anthology. Readers with fiction titles could be assigned the call number "www.fiction". This call number was created by the cataloging staff of the Baltimore County Public Library, in Maryland, which was the first to contribute cataloging to OCLC for Stephen King's Riding the Bullet.
The Algonquin Area Public Library cataloged each reader, and fully catalogs each e-book. A search by title or author tells the patron whether the library owns an e-book version of the title. Using "ebook" in a title keyword search pulls up a complete list of e-book titles and readers owned by the library. Searching by "ebook reader" leads patrons to the full record for each Rocket Reader, which includes all the titles encrypted to the reader. Patrons place holds on readers, rather than titles. Each Rocket Reader is cataloged as "equipment" in the format field, and its catalog number is the reader number assigned by the library and the four-digit ID number assigned by Gemstar. Each e-book title is cataloged as "software" in the format field, and its call number is the Rocket Reader number to which it is assigned.
An alternative to fully cataloging each e-book is to include the e-book titles encrypted to a reader in the contents note of the bibliographic record for that reader. The problem with this approach is that if a library purchases enough titles to exceed the capacity of the reader, what is loaded on the reader at any one time will not match the bibliographic record.
Lending e-books
Some libraries ask patrons to complete a reservation form on which titles for each e-book are listed. Patrons are able to request personalized content and type-size when placing their reservation. Rocket Readers come with a number of accessories: stylus, AC power adapter/battery charger, cradle, screen cleaning cloth, leather case, and instruction sheet. The Algonquin Area Public Library circulates everything in a zip drive carrying case. A camera carrying case or a library tote bag would be alternatives. The library reports that the Rocket Readers, which it lends for three weeks with no renewals, have been in constant circulation with long waiting lists. Patron response has been overwhelmingly positive, with portability and backlighting being the characteristics of e-books most appreciated by patrons.
The Future of e-books in Libraries
Will the current versions of e-books prosper, or suffer the fate of e-books on diskettes? Business giants Barnes & Noble, Gemstar International, and Microsoft have decided that e-books are worth the investment. Some voices counsel caution, however. John Feldencamp, co-founder and chief executive of online publisher Xlibris, said in the October 2, 2000, Wall Street Journal, "Do e-books ultimately win? Yes, absolutely. Do they win this year or next year? No. This isn't even slightly cooked yet." Librarians would be well advised to stay clicked-in to the following web sites for current, library-oriented e-book information:
http://bibliofuture.com
http://www.ebooknet.com
http://ebookconnections.com
http://www.elibrarybook.com 
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