E-book frustration

I feel a bit of a rant coming on. Because e-books are very frustrating.

I've felt this way for a while, but my emotions have risen to surface following a talk given by Michael Porter at the recent Web 2.You conference. (I cribbed some phrases here from an e-mail that I wrote to him; hope he doesn't mind!)

My library, like many academic libraries, has purchased thousands of e-books that are essentially PDFs to be read on the computer screen. Indeed, as Mark recently discussed, e-books are inevitable. At first, I thought, "ok, great, students can read books at home without having to borrow them from the library." The main drawback seemed to be the potential discomfort of reading off a screen. Professors, too, are excited by this type of e-book as it allows them to reduce the size and cost of their coursepacks and to lessen the burden of textbook prices on their students. But alas, it is too good to be true, as many other before me have found.

My frustration especially arose after Michael Porter's exhortation for libraries to "give users what they want in the format they want" during the Web 2.You talk.

On the one hand, many students are uncomfortable reading off screens and want their print books. A session at the 2009 EDUCAUSE conference reported on a user study that found that students exhibited emotional reactions to e-books, often describing feelings of psychological distress and confusion when reading them. They needed a tactile experience of annotating and seeing page numbers to feel like they were really reading. Although the students had an affinity for handheld devices, they expressed a preference for physical print books. These students were using "real" e-books on Sony Readers, but the interfaces for browser-based e-books are miles vis-à-vis clunky navigation. They also restrict printing and downloading.

Even worse, many publishers and/or platforms place nonsensical limitations on concurrent users. Maybe it's just me, but I find it difficult to explain to professors that the online version of a required textbook for a class of 600 students can only be read by one or two students at a time, and that nope, the provider will NOT let us buy additional copies or licenses. It seems to me that this model is broken. (N.B. some providers sell licenses for unlimited users...why can't they all?)

DRM (digital rights management) is also a huge concern when discussing "real" downloadable e-books. DRM often prevents people from using media in valid and lawful ways due to "overprotection" of the distributors' rights. A post on the schooling.us blog gives a great illustration: DRM is "as ridiculous as telling someone that they are only allowed to read in certain rooms of their house, but it's roughly the equivalent." How can librarians fulfill their professional responsibility of connecting people with information if there are technological walls blocking the way?

However, on the other hand, students want everything to be available online all the time. Furthermore, the same study presented at EDUCAUSE found that students' reading comprehension was the same whether they read electronic or paper books. And although most of our e-books are currently digital reproductions of the printed page, the technological possibilities are enormous—for example, to include multimedia content, interactive features, custom content, integration with assessment and grading, or social learning features.

At the EDUCAUSE session, a representative from McGraw-Hill argued that we are still early in the process of e-book development. The book is only one part of the larger learning process or “learning ecosystem,” so more research is needed on the ergonomics and “ethnography” of study.I can only hope that this way of thinking comes to pass in reality, with distributors of content, whether they be publishers or libraries, paying attention to the evidence and giving people what they want.

In the meantime, what can we do when our options are limited in terms of meeting users' needs? Do we provide less-than-ideal materials in spite of the limitations? Do we wait until better e-books exist? How can we make e-books better?

References

EDUCAUSE 2009 session: "E-Books, E-Textbooks, and E-Readers," featuring panelists from Penn State University, Northwest Missouri State University, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, and VitalSource. November 4, 2009. http://www.educause.edu/E09+Hybrid/EDUCAUSE2009FacetoFaceConferen/EBooksETextbooksandEReaders/176075

Web 2.You 2010 session: “2 Point Where? Technology Evolution and the Uncertain Future of Libraries” by Michael Porter. February 5, 2010. http://web2pointyou.pbworks.com/

Thanks to Flickr user baking_in_pearls for use of the image. License: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic