Abstract Objectives: This work attempts to establish the use and attitudes that users of the Library of the Institute of Physical-Chemistry “Rocasolano” (Biqfr) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) have with regard to scientific and technical ebooks. Thereby a better understanding will be obtained of the behavioural patterns towards this electronic resource which is in its early stages of implementation within the research environment. Methods: An online survey was carried out of the users mentioned through the library blog, obtaining a sample of seventy users of which 63% use Biqfr ebooks.
Results: In the main, ebooks are used for the purpose of work and research, and the PC is the device most used to read them. Despite this, the attitude of the users towards ebooks is considered conservative, though at the same time optimistic, as they consider them as a useful tool when searching for information. Response distribution according to academic status and age As could be expected, in the student group (predoctoral and university students) young users predominate, that is, up to 35 years of age; in contrast, in the researcher group (postdoctoral and research staff), although there are users belonging to the three age groups, there is a greater presence of those in the age range between 36 and 55 years. In relation to the research area of the respondents, more than a half of the users (64.3%) work in the area of chemistry.
They are followed by those specialized in physics (24.3%) and other disciplines (11.4%), among which structural biology stands out. By comparing the age variable with that of status, the existence of a significant relation can be detected (c2=16.957 and P-valor=0.000). This relationship is due to the fact that the type of answers for each of the areas studied is different depending on the professional categories that have been analyzed. A greater participation of researchers in the field of chemistry can be observed, with 75.4% of the total answers within this area, while only 15.8% of the respondents belong to the area of physics; however, 61.5% of the answers of the later come from predoctoral and university students (see table 1). Academic status Area of work or study Physics Chemistry Other areas Total Predoctoral and university students n 8 2 3 13% 61,5 15,4 23,1 100,0 Researchers n 9 43 5 57% 15,8 75,4 8,8 100,0 Total n 17 45 8 70% 24,3 64,3 11,4 100,0 c2 = 16,957 i P – valor = 0,000 Table 1: Area of work or study vs academic status 4.1 Use of Biqfr ebooks The results obtained allow us to affirm that the level of usage of scientific-technical ebooks in the research library is high, as 63% of users surveyed indicated that they have used this type of electronic resource at some time. A significant relation between the age of the respondents and the utilization of ebooks was detected (c2=10.349 and P-valor=0.006), as the age groups up to 35 years (55.6%) and between 36 and 55 years (80.0%) were those who most utilized this electronic resource, compared to the 56 years and more group who have not used it (64.7%). Use of ebooks by age Researchers as well as students have used this electronic resource equally, that is to say that neither of the two groups stand out as making greater use of the ebook given that there is no relationship between the variables.
Therefore, age constitutes a more conditioning factor than status, as was expected. On the other hand, it is interesting to observe the motives given by users for not using ebooks: (see table 2): 46.2% have not used them because they find the information they need in other sources such as electronic journals and databases. 38.5% indicated that reading on the screen was uncomfortable, while 34.6% stated simply a lack of knowledge for not using ebooks. A much smaller percentage of respondents, 3.8%, indicated that the cause of the lack of use was the poor offer of books in this format in their interest areas, or the difficulty of finding them in the Biqfr catalogue.
Purpose Pattern And Process Ebook Readers
These data demonstrates that lack of use is due not only to the absence of ebooks on pertinent subjects in the libraries, but rather to acquired habits, which leads users to consult firstly other kinds of resources and/or makes them reluctant to take on a new information resource, a phenomenon which has occurred constantly throughout history when an innovative technology or format is faced with. Motives Responses% Information in other sources 12 46,2 Uncomfortable reading on the screen 10 38,5 Lack of awareness 9 34,6 Difficulty to find ebooks in the catalogue 1 3,8 Limited offer in users’ interest areas 1 3,8 Other reasons 3 11,5 Table 2. Motives for not using scientific-technical ebooks In open answer questions, in which users could express their opinions, a strong attachment to the printed book, was not detected compared to the ebook. Probably this attitude would be different in a social sciences and humanities library, where the printed book is highly valued both for its content as well as an object. With regard to the difference by age (see table 3), 50% of the group of those up to 35 years mentioned the lack of awareness that they have of this electronic resource as the main reason for the lack of use of ebooks.
The response rate is similar to the 36 to 55 year age group, but increases to 57.1%. In the case of users of 56 years or more, 63.6% indicated that the main motive for not using ebooks is that they find the information they need from other sources. The second reason for not using ebooks, both in the age groups up to 35 and 56 years and more is that it is uncomfortable to read them on the screen. In contrast, for the 36 to 55 years age group, the second reason is that they find the information that they need from other sources. Motives Age Up to 35 36-55 56+ Total. Total n 8 7 11 26 Table 3. Motives for not using ebooks by age groups The three groups coincide in answering that the reasons with least influence for not using ebooks are the difficulty in finding them in the library catalogue and the limited availability of ebooks in their areas of interest.
From these results it can be concluded that the reasons which restrain the use of ebooks are related to acquired habits (reading on paper more than on the screen, consultation of the habitual sources with respect to new ones) or, in other words, the work of librarians and publishers is valued and they are not seen as barriers to the use of the ebook. Regarding answers by status (see table 4), 66.7% of students (predoctoral and university students) do not use ebooks due to the lack of awareness that they have with respect to this electronic resource, which shows either a need for training in the use of information resources or a lack of regular contact with their libraries. On the other hand, the researchers group (staff and postdoctoral), which represents 55.0%, mentioned that they find the information that they need in other sources of information, and therefore, they do not need new ones. As a second motive both groups agree indicating that reading ebooks on the screen is uncomfortable, which leads to their lack of interest in this resource. In contrast, the reasons which least give problems, when ebooks are used, are the difficulty in finding them in the catalogue and the limited availability in their areas of interest, a conclusion that coincides with the responses obtained with the groups by age. Motives Status Predoc. Students Researchers Total Lack of awareness n 4 5 9.
Total n 6 20 26 Table 4. Motives for not using ebooks by status 4.2 Behaviour of users towards the scientific-technical ebook With regard to how ebooks are used, 79.5% of the respondents use them for research, 77.3% employ them for general consultations and 43.2% for study. To a lesser extent, 25.0% of users utilize them as a means for scientific and academic dissemination and 18.2% for class preparation.
In addition, usage changes according to the age group (see table 5). Thus, users up to 35 years answered that they use ebooks mainly to make general consultations, while the group between 36 and 55 years mentioned research as the main use of the ebook. The group of older users, referred to a dual usage of ebooks: for research and for general consultation. Purposes Up to 35 36-55 56+ Total General consultation n 10 20 4 34. % 20,00 25,00 33,30 Total n 10 28 6 44 Table 5.
Purpose of the use of ebooks by age group All the groups studied coincide in noting that the purposes for which they least use ebooks are class preparation and as a means for scientific and academic dissemination. The latter presents another necessary transition: from using the ebook for research and obtaining information to choosing the ebook for publishing.
Although this is not really the researchers', but the publishers' decision, the former has to have the willingness to try a new format, having to overcome reluctances that may exist. Those surveyed in this study indicated that the medium or reading device which they most used for ebooks is the PC. That is the case of 95.5% of respondents, not discerning differences due to age. The second most frequent option is reading on paper, after printing the book, used by 36.4% of respondents.
These are followed by reading on e-readers (15.9%), and further behind mobile phones and PDAs (2.3%). Regarding the age variable, the results show that even if the three groups read mainly on the PC, the group of older users are those who choose reading on paper as a more frequent second option, after printing the ebook. Analysing this question from the perspective of status the only noteworthy point is that predoctoral and university students use paper significantly more than researchers (71.4% and 30% respectively), which is particularly surprising keeping in mind that young people are better trained and are more intuitive with regard to electronic devices.
Perhaps the use of technology is, in their case, more related to leisure activities; in this case, the lack of 'electronic literacy' in the scientific/professional sphere is a notable finding. Focusing on the reasons or driving motives of respondents for utilising ebooks, 90.7% used them on their own initiative, 16.3% were motivated by suggestions made by librarians, 11.6% were encouraged by colleagues and/or friends and 2.3% were motivated by suggestions made by teaching staff.
The availability of ebooks in the BiqFr library was indicated in 'other reasons'. In relation to age or status, no differentiating patterns of use were observed. As for the reasons for using ebooks, 66.7% of respondents said that it was because of the permanent access (24 hours, 7 days a week) of the resource. 59.5% stated that ebooks allow them to make searches or go to specific parts of the text. On the other hand, 52.4% use ebooks because of their large storage capacity, 47.6% because they can read them anywhere and 33% because they are easy to use.
While permanent access is a reason given by the majority of users, irrespective of their age, there are differences in the second reasons given for using ebooks. The group aged up to 35 years indicated that it uses ebooks for their large storage capacity, while the other age groups noted the possibility of browsing and being able go to specific parts of the text, that is, they give more importance to browsing and information recovery, so that they value more the use of applications of the electronic resource, something expected with advanced users of scientific information. The answers concerning reasons for using ebooks also differ according to the status of users (closely related to age).
In parallel with the previous results, predoctoral and university students mentioned all the options offered as advantages of ebooks, although they also highlighted their storage capacity and the possibility of reading them anywhere. On the other hand, established researchers (therefore a higher age range) value especially the permanent access of the resource and the possibility of browsing and going to specific parts of a text (see table 6). Use of ebooks Status.
Last updated: March 21, 2017. Back in the 19th century English author, Martin Tupper wrote: 'A good book is the best of friends, the same today and for ever.' It's true: books are friendly, familiar, and loveable and that probably explains why it's taking us so long to get used to the idea of portable books. But with the arrival of a new generation of electronic book readers, such as the Sony Reader, and Amazon Kindle, the days of the printed word just might be numbered. Let's take a closer look at electronic books (ebooks) and find out how they work! Photo: Above: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite electronic book reader. Below: The rival Sony Reader PRS-350 is considerably smaller and designed to carry around in your pocket.
Both are smaller than the first generation of Kindles, because their touch-sensitive screens do away with the need for a separate keyboard. Two in one: books. And the information they contain Think of a book and you think of a single object, but the books we read are actually two things in one: there's the information (the words and pictures and their meaning) and there's the physical object (the, cardboard, and ink) that contains them. Sometimes the physical part of a book is as important as the information it carries: it's really true that we judge books by their covers—at least when we're standing in shops deciding which ones to buy—and that's why publishers devote so much attention to making their books look attractive. But, a lot of the time, the information is much more important to us and we don't really care how it's delivered. That's why many of us now turn to the when we want to find things out instead of visiting the local library. In short, we've learned to split off the information we need from the way it's delivered.
Ebooks take this idea a step further. When we talk about an ebook, we really mean a digital version of a printed text that we can read on a handheld electronic device like a miniature laptop — two quite separate things, once again. How do you store a book in electronic form?
An ebook is really just a computer file full of words (and sometimes images). In theory, you could make an ebook just by typing information into a word processor. The file you save has all the elements of an electronic book: you can read the information on a computer, search it for keywords, or share it easily with someone else. The first attempt to create a worldwide library of ebooks was called and it's still running today. Long before the World Wide Web came along, a bunch of dedicated Gutenberg volunteers took printed books and scanned or typed them into their computers to make electronic files they could share.
For legal reasons, these books were (and still are) mostly classic old volumes that had fallen out of copyright. The electronic versions of these printed books are very basic, text-only computer files stored in a format called ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)—a way of representing letters, numbers, and symbols with the numbers 0-255 that virtually every computer can understand.
Photo: The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite electronic book reader (left) alongside the rival Sony eReader (right). This Kindle has a fairly unobtrusive set of LED lights built around the screen to make reading easier in the dim evening light. Although it's hard to see in this photo, the Paperwhite does has a much whiter screen than the Sony. Even so, I find the text much sharper on the Sony. It's also worth pointing out that I've owned two of these Sonys and the screen on one was noticeably better than the other. In other words, the quality of ebook screens definitely does vary.
The problem with ASCII is that the text contains very little formatting information: you can't distinguish headings from text, there's only one basic font, and there's no bold or italics. That's why people developed much more sophisticated electronic files like PDF (Portable Document Format). The basic idea of PDF was to store an almost exact replica of a printed document in an electronic file that people could easily read on screens or print out, if they preferred. The HTML files people use to create are another kind of electronic information. Every HTML page on a website is a bit like a separate page in a book, but the links on web pages mean you can easily hop around until you find exactly the information you want.
Purpose Pattern And Process Ebook Reader Online
The links on websites give you powerfully interconnected information that is often much quicker to use than a library of printed books. The greatest strength of ASCII, PDF, and HTML files (you can read them on any computer) is also their greatest weakness: who wants to sit staring at a computer screen, reading thousands of words? Most screens are much less sharp than the type in a printed book and it quickly tires your eyes reading in this way. Even if you can store lots of books on your computer, you can't really take it to bed with you or read it on the beach or in the bath-tub! Now, there's nothing to stop you downloading simple text files onto something like an iPod or a and reading them, very slowly and painfully, from the small display—but it's not most people's idea of curling up with a good book. What we really need is something with the power of a computer, the portability of a cellphone, and the friendliness and readability of a printed book.
And that's exactly where electronic book readers come in. How do you read an electronic book file? An electronic book reader is a small, portable computer designed for reading books stored in a digital format such as ASCII, PDF, HTML, or another similar format. (Currently the two most popular ebook formats are EPUB, a worldwide, open standard that evolved from an earlier standard called OEB (Open ebook) and widely used by Sony Readers and most other ebook readers, and AZW, a proprietary format developed by Amazon and currently readable only on its Kindle reader.) Books take up very little space when you store them in electronic format: you could easily fit 10,000 electronic copies of the Bible onto a single.
Most ebook readers can store hundreds or even thousands of titles at a time and some have Internet connections so you can download more books whenever you wish. Photo: You can read electronic books right now, even if you don't have a handheld ebook reader.
There's free electronic book software available for all the popular operating systems. You can also download versions of the Amazon Kindle that work on a PC, Mac, iPad, or cellphone. Here's the Caliber electronic book reader running on a normal computer screen, showing the first page of F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned. The most important part of an ebook reader is the screen. The first ebooks used small versions of LCD laptop screens which have a resolution (sharpness) of about 35 pixels per cm (90 pixels per inch).
Purpose Pattern And Process Ebook Reader Book
You could easily see the dots making up the letters and it was quite tiring to read for more than a few minutes at a time. The latest ebooks use an entirely different technology called electronic ink. Instead of using LCD displays, they show words and letters using tiny, black and white plastic granules that move about inside microscopic, spherical capsules under precise control. Displays like this have about twice the resolution of ordinary computer screens, are clearly visible in sunlight, and use much less power. In fact, they're almost as sharp and easy to read as printed paper. We'll see how these screens work in a moment.
The lack of books in electronic format is one of the things that puts people off using ebook readers—and that's what made Amazon.com's Kindle reader both an exciting development and an instant success. Amazon already worked with virtually all the world's publishers as a bookseller, so it was able to make huge numbers of titles available for Kindle in electronic format—over 88,000 books were available on the launch date.
That's certainly what people want and expect from an ebook reader, but whether it will finally make electronic books as popular as iPods remains to be seen. How does E Ink® work? Photo: Computer screens as we knew them in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At that time, the best screens could display no more than about 64,000 pixels and often just uppercase text or very crude 'pixelated' (square block) graphics. Computer games like Space Invaders, shown here, were very primitive—but still highly addictive! Since electronic ink has been crucial to the success of ebooks, let's now take a detailed look at how it works. You're probably reading these words in the same way that I am—by staring at a flat, computer screen.
For people over the age of about 35, who grew up with computers that used blocky green and black screens with just 40 characters across and 25 down, modern screens are wonderful and amazing. But they still have their drawbacks. Look closely, and you can see jagged edges to the letters.
Try to read an LCD screen in direct sunlight and (unless the screen has a very bright backlight), you'll really struggle. But the worse thing is that LCD screens lack the lightness, portability, and sheer user-friendliness of: you can happily read a book for hours, but try the same trick with a computer screen and your eyes will quickly tire. Photo: LCD versus E Ink®: The E Ink display on a Sony Reader (bottom) is much sharper and easier to read than a typical LCD screen (top). Magnifying by about 8–10 times and zooming in on a single word, you can see why. The E Ink display makes sharper letters with a uniformly white background. The LCD display blurs its letters with anti-aliasing to make them less jagged, though that makes them harder to read close up.
The red, blue, and green colored pixels used to make up the LCD's 'white' background are also much more noticeable. Unlike the E Ink display, an LCD does not use a true white background: it relies on your eye and brain to fuse colored pixels instead. The resolution of E Ink is also far greater: typical LCD displays use around 90 pixels per inch, whereas E Ink displays use at least twice as many pixels. Back in the early 1970s, the Xerox Corporation that had pioneered a decade earlier became concerned about the threat that computers might pose to its core ink-and-paper business: if everyone started using computers, and offices became paperless, what would happen to a company so utterly dependent on paper technology?
It was for that reason that Xerox pumped huge amounts of money into ™, (Palto Alto Research Center), the now-legendary campus where modern, user-friendly personal computing was pioneered. Among the many innovations developed there were personal computers that used a (the 'desktop' screen featuring icons, later copied by the Apple Macintosh® and Microsoft Windows®),.
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And electronic paper, which was invented by PARC researcher. The basic idea of electronic ink and paper was (and remains) very simple: to produce an electronic display with all the control and convenience of a computer screen but the readability, portability, and user-friendliness of paper.
How does electronic ink and paper work? Most electronic ink and paper screens use a technology called electrophoresis, which sounds complex but simply means using to move tiny particles (in this case ink) through a fluid (in this case a or gel). Other uses of electrophoresis include DNA testing, where electricity is used to separate the parts of a DNA sample by making them move across a gel, which enables them to be compared with other samples and identified. In one of the best-known electronic ink products, called E Ink® and used in ebooks such as the Amazon Kindle, there are millions of microcapsules, roughly the same diameter as a human hair, each of which is the equivalent of a single pixel (one of the tiny squares or rectangles from which the picture on a computer or TV screen is built up). Each capsule is filled with a clear fluid and contains two kinds of tiny ink granules: white ones (which are positively charged) and black ones (which are negatively charged). The capsules are suspended between electrodes switched on and off by an electronic circuit, and each one can be controlled individually.
By changing the electric field between the electrodes, it's possible to make the white or black granules move to the top of a capsule (the part closest to the reader's eye) so it appears like a white or black pixel. By controlling large numbers of pixels in this way, it's possible to display text or pictures.
Animation: Electronic ink works through electrophoresis. Each pixel (microcapsule) in the display (the gray circle) contains black (negatively charged) and white (positively charged) ink granules. When a positive field (shown in blue) is applied to the top electrode, the black capsules migrate to the top, making the pixel look black when seen from above; switching the field over makes the granules change position so the pixel appears white. Advantages and disadvantages of electronic ink If you've tried reading an electronic book, you'll know that electronic ink and paper is much easier to read from for long periods than an LCD computer screen.
Since the microcapsules stay in position indefinitely, with little or no electric current, electronic ink displays have extremely low power consumption. A typical ebook reader with an E Ink display can be used for something like 2–4 weeks of average everyday reading on a single charge—which is much less power than a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. Low power consumption means low use and that translates into an; in other words, electronic ink and paper is environmentally friendly. What about the energy needed to manufacture your reader in the first place? According to British environmental auditor, who's done the math, you've only to read 20–70 ebooks to offset that energy; the Cleantech group has estimated that a Kindle makes savings in carbon emissions after just one year's use. The disadvantages are less obvious until you start using electronic ink in earnest. First, although the displays work excellently in bright indoor light and daylight, including direct sunlight, they have no light of their own (unlike LCD displays, which have backlights shining through them from back to front so you can see them).
That makes them hard to use in poor indoor light, especially in the evenings, which is why many ebook readers are sold with clumsy addon lamps. Electronic ink also takes much longer to build up the image of a page than an LCD screen, which means it's unsuitable for everyday computer displays using any kind of moving image (and completely unsuitable for fast-moving images such as computer games and videos). Sometimes parts of a previous page linger on as 'ghosts' until you've turned another page or two.
You've probably noticed that, when you 'turn the page' of an electronic book, the entire screen momentarily flashes black before the new page is displayed? That's a rather clumsy compromise to prevent ghosts, in which the screen tries to erase the previous page before displaying a new one (a bit like Etch-a-Sketch®!). Another major disadvantage is that most electronic ink displays are currently black and white.
Crude color displays do exist (E Ink has produced one called Triton since 2010, in which a layer of red, green, and blue color filters is mounted over the usual black-and-white microcapsules) and better ones are in development, but they're much more expensive than their black-and-white electronic paper (or LCD equivalents) and only display a relatively small number of colors (Triton can manage 4000, compared to about 17 million on a decent LCD). In time, we're bound to have color electronic books and magazines, but don't hold your breath. Amazon's Jeff Bezos, speaking in mid-2009, said that a color Kindle ebook reader was 'multiple years' away: 'I've seen the color displays in the laboratory and I can assure you they're not ready for prime time.'
That was why, when Amazon first shipped its color Kindle Fire™ product in September 2011, it had an LCD display. In May 2016, E Ink announced a color replacement for Triton called Advanced Color ePaper (ACeP), but it's still some way from making it into Kindles and other ebook readers. Photo: Night and day, are you the one?
Here I've propped a Sony Reader against the screen of a conventional laptop and photographed it in different light conditions. Left: In bright light or daytime outdoors, electronic ink displays are much easier to read than backlit LCD displays, which become virtually invisible. Right: In dark indoor light in the evenings, things are reversed: LCDs are much easier to read and electronic ink displays are a struggle to decipher unless you sit in strong light (or use a clip-on light attachment). Which electronic book reader should I buy? Kindle, Sony Reader, Nook, Elonex—which one should you buy? The decision is a little easier than it used to be now Sony has (regrettably) stopped making ebook readers, though I'd still recommend looking out for cheap secondhand Sonys on auction sites. (My first Sony Reader cost a little under US$200; when I broke it, five years later, I picked up a mint-condition replacement on eBay for about US$25!) They're all broadly similar: they're all light, portable, and handheld and they all have large internal that hold hundreds or thousands of books.
Some have; others (like the older and cheaper Kindles) have miniature. Some have connections for downloading more books; others (such as the Sony Readers) have to be connected to a computer with a cable. If you connect with USB, running an ebook reader is rather like running an iPod or MP3 player: typically you maintain a library on your PC with a piece of software similar to iTunes, to which you add and remove books and other documents. When you plug in your reader, it 'syncs' (synchronizes) its internal with the library on your PC, adding any new books and deleting any unwanted ones. If you have a wireless reader, you maintain your library on the reader itself or in the (stored on a remote computer somewhere and accessed online), adding and removing books directly. Wireless or cable? It's not a big issue, I don't think, though elderly people who have little experience of using a computer may find buying books easier with something like a wireless Kindle with its built-in, easy-to-use bookstore).
Photo: Horses for courses: Portable versions of the Sony Reader have a much smaller page size than a typical hardbook book. That's great if you want to carry your reader in your jacket pocket or your handbag so you can read while you're travelling.
It's much less attractive if you do most of your reading at home: the smaller the screen, the more often you'll need to turn the pages. This is one example of why it pays to think about how you're going to use an ebook reader before you buy it. Displays and batteries The best and most expensive readers use extremely high-resolution E Ink screens that work better in daylight than at night (you'll need good indoor lighting or a clip-on light if you're planning to do most of your e-reading in the evenings); LCD-screen readers (such as the Elonex) have backlit screens that favor indoor use and (like computer screens) can be tricky to read in bright sunlight. Amazon's current state-of-the-art reader, the Kindle Paperwhite, has discreet little LED lights built around the edge of the screen that make a noticeable difference when you're reading indoors in the dim evening light. E Ink apparently uses energy only when you turn the pages, so the Sony Reader can happily survive for about two weeks of very heavy use on a single charge of the batteries, while the Kindle Paperwhite claims up to eight weeks of battery time. That means it's also very environmentally friendly to read books or documents from a handheld ebook reader compared to reading them on a computer screen. Some ebook readers can cope with ebooks in all kinds of different formats.
The Sony Reader, for example, lets you read Microsoft Word and PDF files, as well as standard formats such as EPUB. The PDF viewer is really neat, allowing you to rotate the screen or scroll documents column-by-column for easy reading.
The Amazon Kindle doesn't currently support the EPUB format, but it does allow you to view other file formats such as PDF. You can also mail documents to your Kindle, which is something you can't do on a Sony. Photo: You can use the Sony Reader in 'landscape' orientation if you find that easier, though you have to switch it over manually from the keyboard (unlike with a smartphone, the display doesn't rotate itself). Here I'm reading a PDF file of by physicist David MacKay. If matter to you, reading documents on an ebook reader like this might appeal, because it uses a fraction as much energy as a laptop.
The text is much more legible than it appears in this photograph. Finding ebooks Most books currently produced by publishers are copyrighted, which means you can (and should) expect to pay a fair price if you want to use them. A decade ago, when I first wrote this article, relatively few publishers had embraced ebooks.
Today, most publishers make most new books available in at least one electronic format, and many sell direct to readers from their own websites, but they're taking their time making backlist and out-of-print titles available this way. Generally, it's relatively easy to find new mass-market bestsellers in ebook format but harder to find more specialized books and quality, literary fiction. Public domain classics are the easiest books to find in ebook format, largely thanks to the sterling and visionary work of (and, more recently, the, which currently promises over a million free ebook titles). If you enjoy reading classic novels, buying an ebook reader is probably a no-brainer; if you're more a fan of 20th century literary fiction, you'll have a harder time finding what you want in digital form.
Unfortunately, the standard of production for ebooks is noticeably lower and sloppier than it is for print books: expect to find scanning and formatting errors, missing endnotes, redacted photos (because of copyright issues), artworks that are blurred or don't display properly, tables that don't fit on the screen, and worse. It's quite obvious that publishers don't apply the same high editorial and proofreading standards to printed books and ebooks. Take a moment to send complaints direct to a publisher whenever you find a really sloppy ebook, copy the author in if you can find contact details for them—and be sure to ask for a refund.
If you buy copyright ebooks from either Amazon or another outlet, you'll find they're protected by what's called DRM (digital rights management)—effectively a kind of that prevents people from distributing pirate copies of books illegally. Amazon uses its own DRM system, while Sony (and others) use a system developed by Adobe called (ADE), which requires you to register your reader the first time you use it. DRM protection restricts what you can do with books you've bought, but it's not necessarily the drawback it seems. First, it's very much a necessity from a publisher's point of view: it's only because ebook readers like the Kindle have DRM protection built in that publishers are starting to take what they see as a major risk in making their books available in digital formats. Another advantage of DRM is that it allows libraries to lend people ebooks for limited periods of time (using systems like ).
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I'm delighted to find I can log in to my local library and download, for free, for periods of up to 14 days, a fair selection of a few hundred popular ebooks. Once the borrowing time has expired, the books delete themselves automatically from my reader. Be warned that some libraries allow lending only in EPUB and PDF format, and you might not be able to borrow books on a Kindle. Who invented electronic books?.
3000BCE: Ancient Egyptians make the first from the stem of the papyrus plant. 105CE: Chinaman Ts'ai Lun develops modern paper from hemp fiber.
1450: German Johannes Gutenberg invents the modern process of with movable metal type, which leads to a vast increase in the popularity of books. 1945: In a famous article in Atlantic Monthly called, US government scientist Vannevar Bush proposes a kind of desk-sized memory store called Memex, which has some of the features later incorporated into electronic books and the World Wide Web (WWW). 1968: Computer scientist Alan Kay imagines a portable computerized book, which he nicknames the Dynabook. 1971: Michael Hart launches at the University of Illinois: an electronic repository for classic, out-of-copyright books. 1990: Sony launches its, a portable electronic reader costing $550 that stores and reads books from compact discs (CD-ROMs). It is a commercial flop.
1990s: Encyclopedia publishers such as Britannica and Dorling Kindersley (DK) experiment with making their books available on interactive CD-ROMs. DK wins many awards for its CD-ROMs, but closes its multimedia business in the late 1990s as competition mounts from the Internet. Late 1990s: Several new handheld, electronic book readers are launched, including the SoftBook, RocketBook, and Everybook—but fail to make much impact on the marketplace. 2000: Best-selling horror author Stephen King launches a short novel called Riding the Bullet in electronic format and sells over half a million copies.
2001: Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales give the world Wikipedia—an electronic encyclopedia anyone can contribute to. 2007: Amazon.com launches its wireless Kindle reader with thousands of electronic books available in electronic format, along with newspapers, RSS feeds, and other forms of 'digital content.' . 2010: Amazon Kindle becomes Amazon's number one bestselling product, confirming that electronic books (and readers) really have arrived!. 2010: E Ink announces Triton, a colored version of its ebook screen technology. 2011: Project Gutenberg celebrates 40 years of producing and distributing electronic books.
2014: A report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers predicts ebooks will outsell printed books by 2018, but UK bookstore founder Tim Waterstone argues the market will go into decline. 2014: Sony stops selling its Readers after growing sales of smartphones and tablets cause a major fall in sales.
2015: The Association of American Publishers reports a dramatic reversal of fortune, with a 10 percent fall in sales of ebooks (which still account for only a fifth of the market). 2016: E Ink announces Advanced Color ePaper (ACeP), an improved color screen. Find out more On this website. News. by Alexandra Alter. The New York Times. September 22, 2015.
Why has there been a dramatic decline in ebook sales and a resurgence in printed books?. by Paul McFedries. IEEE Spectrum, 28 January 2015.
A look at the various technical terms used to describe different kinds of ebooks (and related technologies).: BBC News, 4 June 2014. A new market study predicts that the British market for ebooks will reach £1 billion by 2018. Not everyone agrees the ebook revolution will continue, as you can see from another BBC story, from 31 March 2014. by Jack Schofield, The Guardian, 15 September 2011. Jack explores the differences between EPUB, AZW, MOBI, and a plethora of other ebook file formats that you might find confusing.
by Mark Say, The Guardian, 14 April 2011. How libraries can lend books in electronic format, thanks to systems such as OverDrive, ebrary, and Public Library Online.: BBC Click, 27 June 2011. How schools are turning to ebooks, iPads, and cloud computing. by Bill Thompson.
A thoughtful technology writer sees different strengths and weaknesses in paper and electronic displays and sees both technologies surviving side-by-side for some time yet. More about E Ink.: Lots of interesting technical information and background.: E Ink's YouTube channel has some great little videos demonstrating black-and-white and color displays. Books.
by Helmut Kipphan. Springer, 2001.
A huge, detailed review covering every printing technology you can imagine, from traditional books to electronic ink.
The 21 st century has seen the beginnings of a great restoration effort towards the world’s forests, accompanied by the emergence of an increasing literature on reforestation, regeneration and regrowth of forest cover. Yet to date, there is no volume which synthesises current knowledge on the extent, trends, patterns and drivers of reforestation. This edited volume draws together research from leading researchers to explore reforestation and forest regrowth across the world, from multiple dimensions – including ecosystem services, protected areas, social institutions, economic transitions, remediation of environmental problems, conservation and land abandonment – and at different scales. Detailing the methods and analyses used from across a wide range of disciplines, and incorporating research from North, South and Central America, Africa, Asia and Europe, this groundbreaking book provides a global overview of current trends, explores their underlying causes and proposes future forest trajectories. The first of its kind, the book will provide an invaluable reference for researchers and students involved in interdisciplinary research and working on issues relevant to the biophysical, geographic, socioeconomic and institutional processes associated with reforestation.
Book Title Reforesting Landscapes Book Subtitle Linking Pattern and Process Editors. Harini Nagendra. Jane Southworth Series Title Series Volume 10 Copyright 2010 Publisher Springer Netherlands Copyright Holder Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
EBook ISBN 978-1-4020-9656-3 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-9656-3 Hardcover ISBN 978-1-4020-9655-6 Softcover ISBN 978-94-007-3085-4 Series ISSN 1572-7742 Edition Number 1 Number of Pages VIII, 396 Number of Illustrations and Tables 15 illustrations in colour Topics.
Purpose, Pattern, and Process explores the processes writers engage in when they write. It focuses on how the purpose of the writing and the patterns of organization used to develop the content affect how those writing processes work. Purpose, Pattern, and Process includes ancillary materials available online:. Content quizzes. Additional materials for selected chapters.
Additional readings with discussion questions and writing assignments eBook Version You will receive access to this electronic text via email after using the shopping cart above to complete your purchase.
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