Sony wants Penn State students to help it figure out why more readers haven’t taken to e-books. The electronics company has provided the university with 100 e-book readers for a yearlong study of “e-book usage in a higher-ed setting,” Publishers Weekly reports.
Run by the English department and the university libraries, the study will track classroom and library use of e-books, and try to figure out how useful they are as research tools and as aids to people with disabilities. Some of the e-books will be library loaners, loaded with “popular categories” such as top-selling fiction.
“We want to be at the front end of this new technology and to help Sony’s technology team create a product that will be useful for how our students work with literature,” Robin Schulze, head of Penn State’s English Department, told the publishing magazine. —Jennifer Howard
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