| Compiled by Chris Armstrong, Consultant & Trainer, e: lisqual@cix.co.uk w: http://www.i-a-l.co.uk b: http://i-a-l.blogspot.com/ and Ray Lonsdale, Reader in Information Studies, University of Wales , Aberystwyth e: rel@aber.ac.uk
What is an e-book?
There have been many attempts to define the term over the last 10 years, and initially the debate was clouded by a mistaken association of the e-book itself with the e-book reader. Now, definitions concentrate on two essentials: that the e-book is intended for reading on a screen, and that what is being read is essentially “book-like”. The first definition is based on an article we wrote in 2002, updated in 2007/8:
“ Any content that is recognisably ‘book-like', regardless of size, origin or composition, but excluding serial publications, made available electronically for reference or reading on any device (handheld or desk-bound) that includes a screen. Armstrong, 2008
The second comes from the 2003 International Encyclopedia of Information and Library Science:
“The result of integrating classical book structure, or rather the familiar concept of a book, with features that can be provided within an electronic environment is referred to as an electronic book (or e-book), which is intended as an interactive document that can be composed and read on a computer.” Landoni, 2003
These definitions have validity at the time of writing, however in the future, given changes in, or the convergence of, technologies, it may be that current distinctions between e-books and other formats disappear.
Armstrong, Chris (2008) Books in a virtual world: The evolution of the e-book and its lexicon. Journal of Librarianship and information Science [in press]
Landoni, Monica (2003) Electronic Books. In John Feather and Paul Sturges (eds) International Encyclopedia of Information and Library Science. London : Routledge. 168-171.
Brief history of e-books
1970s – Free e-books publishing began as text archives with initiatives such as the Gutenberg Project in North America . Later other archives developed such as that at the University of Virginia and the Oxford Text Archive. In this guise free e-books are commonly digitised versions of printed works.
1980s – This decade witnessed the emergence and development of commercial e-book publishing, dominated by the North American university presses. To help address the spiralling costs of publishing printed academic monographs, these publishers turned to electronic publishing. Although the vast majority of titles were digitised versions, a small number of original e-books were being created.
1990s – Following on, we saw the proliferation of electronic fiction publishing in North America (largely made available for early e-book readers), and during this decade e-reference publishing also took off, and one singular initiative was the emergence of integrated reference collections such as Oxford Reference Online. A major new approach complementing individual e-publishers were aggregations of e-book titles from several publishers made available by commercial companies such as NetLibrary.
2000 – A major stimulus to e-book publishing within the UK was the formation of a new national, strategic body - JISC e-Book Working Group, which is charged with helping to create a critical mass of relevant titles for the HE and FE sectors, and to promote take up and usage of e-books within those sectors. During the subsequent years there has been an increase in e-textbook publishing, and a significant development in publishing for other sectors such as schools and children's libraries, and the public library service. Increasingly, a diverging range of works are now being digitised, including report literature, reading schemes, study guides. Another important development has been the creation of free digital libraries such as the International Children's Digital Library, which are acting as a stimulus to multi-lingual e-book publishing.
Characteristics of e-books
Are e-books just electronic versions of print books?
Many, in fact the majority of e-books encountered in libraries, are digitized versions of print-on-paper originals. However, increasingly electronic-only or ‘born-digital' books are being developed, e.g. City Sites in the table available on the Web-version of this Fact Sheet
Do e-books offer more than plain text?
Where page images or facsimiles are presented, or in some text archives (such as Gutenberg) all that is available is a representation of the original text with its images. Most publishers and aggregators add considerably more value, and allow full-text searching (often of the collection, as well as of individual books), an integrated dictionary, a live index as well as a table of contents that is expandable to sections, external links, and the ability to bookmark, highlight and note take online.
What is the difference between free, purchased and licensed e-books?
Free e-books do not have a publisher's imprimatur, and consequently may lack in quality and authority, suffer from pop-up or in-page advertising, and may be restricted to out-of-copyright editions. Purchased e-books are most often for personal use, may have limited functionality and a limited selection of titles. Licensed e-books are normally targeted at library use (although see below under the question on personal/library use), offer a whole uniform collection with a single interface with considerable functionality, may allow virtual lending and/or collection building (see for example, EBL), and – depending on licence terms – multi-user access.
What is the difference between a publisher and an aggregator?
Publishers (e.g. Taylor & Francis) make e-books available that have been produced in-house, sometimes originally as a paper book. Aggregators (e.g. NetLibrary or Credo) acquire the rights to lists of titles from any number of publishers – probably never the complete publisher's list – and bring together subject collections of titles from a range of publishers using a single interface. Aggregators may have 60,000 or 100,000 titles available from as many as 200 publishers; libraries normally licence subsets of the whole.
How can e-books be read?
As most e-books are available online, they can be read on PCs and workstations, hand-held and palm computers, laptops, and even on mobile phones as well as on readers. Not all e-books are available for all of these, sometimes because of the software used and sometimes because of licence restrictions.
What e-book readers are available?
The best of the current generation of readers all use eInk technology, which requires very little battery power and produces a near-print-on-paper reading experience. In 2005, Sony produced the ‘Libri e ' in Japan , but has since developed a ‘westernised' version called ‘The Reader'. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands , iRex Technologies have produced the ‘iLiad'. Due on the scene with the same technology in late 2007/early 2008 are the Kindle from Amazon and the Cybook Gen3 from Bookeen. Both are expected to be compatible with the Mobibook format.
What is the difference between licensing a single e-book and an e-book collection?
Apart from the cost, collections offer a greater added value. Whether made available by a publisher (e.g. OUP: Oxford Reference Collection) or an aggregator such as NetLibrary, collections will usually allow searching across the whole collection (or parts of it), tools such as a dictionary and the ability to create student books, and a single catalogue- and reading-interface.
What is the difference between e-books for personal use or library use?
Some products are made available for individuals, either for purchase as in the case of novels from Internet bookshops, or by the hour/day/month/quarter/annual subscriptions of Questia, or via short-term licences such as the termly student licence offered by Safari. Other products, such as the reference collections made available by Knovel, Credo or Oxford Reference Online; libraries such as Oxford Scholar Online; or subject collections made available by aggregators such as NetLibrary or ebrary are clearly targeted at libraries, although the latter offers personal subscriptions as well. The collections of free titles and the text archives available on the Web, can clearly be used by anyone.
Publishers, Bookshops and Aggregators
The following table is not comprehensive, but offers initial contact with a range of e-book sources and suppliers.
PDF of e-Books Factsheet (32 KB)
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