The ACLS Humanties E-Book project wanted to know how users liked reading its books on their handheld devices. So it selected three of its titles and asked users what it was like to read them on a Kindle, a Sony Reader, or other e-reader. Of the 142 people who responded, 88 percent “expressed overall satisfaction” with how the books looked and could be used on handhelds. But half found the search function frustrating, and only a quarter “felt they would have an easy time citing and referencing these editions,” according to a white paper about the survey.
Librarians made up more than 60 pecent of those who took part in the survey. Eighteen respondents identified themselves as scholars or researchers; another 18 said they were in the faculty/instructor category.
Survey participants missed some aspects of working with print books and of browsing e-books online. Individual e-books made for a Kindle or other e-reader “are not yet adequate for scholarly use” when it comes to matching the cross-searchability and other benefits of books in online collections, the white paper said. It noted that users also missed some options offered by print books such as the ability to quickly skim and mark up text. The white paper concludes that the situation is likely to improve once “a common and more robust format” is adopted for handheald readers and as the devices themselves get better.
The Humanities E-Book staff also did an in-house evaluation of e-books in different formats. It encoutered some difficulties navigating in the formats it tested “and found that annotation and other interaction with the text was difficult using a number of popular e-readers.” The white paper also lays out some of the costs and challenges associated with converting titles in scanned-page and XML formats for use on e-readers.
7 Responses to Monographs on Handheld Devices: Good, but Could Be Better
arthist030 - September 7, 2010 at 5:59 pm
I think there’s a huge untapped market for RENTING monographs on the Kindle. How many times is there an obscure monograph that you want to consult once, and can’t justify shelling out $140 for the hardbound copy? I would definitely pay $5/$10/$20 to borrow a monograph for a week, a month, a year — it would be so much quicker and cheaper than waiting weeks for interlibrary loan to deliver the ungainly 20-pound volume to the library across campus.
jrlupton - September 8, 2010 at 8:45 am
I am really enjoying reading books on my phone and iPad using a Kindle app. I have mainly been reading novels and creative non-fiction, however, not scholarly monographs.
jmkrieger - September 8, 2010 at 12:51 pm
I love my Kindle but the lack of page numbers makes citations quite difficult. Frankly I keep the Kindle for my non-academic reading – until this issue gets resolved. Then I’ll happily go paperless.
jboncek - September 8, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Most e-readers do a horrible job at displaying mathematical text.
rickman - September 9, 2010 at 2:50 am
I agree with arthisto30: Some kind of rental system would be great. Perhaps even a subscription system allowing a certain number of rented books over the course of a year.Annotations (perhaps optionally shared as with Inkling), search, bookmarks, copying short passages and pasting them elsewhere–these are all essential features for scholars, and may have to be implemented slightly differently in a rent/subscription model.But the biggest problem is that most publishers of e-books are not at all interested in making e-books of scholarly works, presumably because of the perceived small reward, combined with the extra features we demand.
dwalbert - September 9, 2010 at 9:25 am
I agree about the need for a rental option, but I’m not sure e-books and handhelds are really the answer here — I’d rather view them on my laptop where I can use Zotero (and a real keyboard). Now if Google Books would let me pay a dollar for a week’s access (or three days, or whatever) to the entirety of any of the books that are preview-only, that would be something…
kaidupe - September 10, 2010 at 12:22 pm
I do not have any problems reading books on my iPad or Kindle. I wish to emphasize reading. The other activities that are described here such as cross-referencing and annotations I use software such as iAnnotate.