Librarian's eBook Newsletter

Report from NIST/NISO Electronic Book 2001 Conference

The mood of this year's Electronic Book conference, sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) was quite somber in comparison with last year's conference. Absent were many of the "big guns" from last year-- netLibrary's vendor booth stood vacant; Gemstar's booth was empty save a stack of brochures; Microsoft was a no-show; the presentation by the Senior VP of Reciprocal (a digital rights management vendor) was abruptly canceled when the company folded the week prior to the conference. Add to this the heightened security all around Washington DC which served as a constant reminder of the tragedy of 9/11, and it is no wonder that the atmosphere of the conference was so solemn. (A special thanks to Tom Peters for sharing his conference notes with me, upon which the following is heavily based!)

Librarians & Educators:

There were a few bright spots, though. The first is that librarians and educators were given a more prominent role at this year's conference. Included among the opening speakers were Mark Luker, Vice President of Educause and Mitch Freedman, President-elect of the American Library Association. Luker described a high-tech future of higher education where time (courses need not start at the same time for each student) and geographic location are irrelevant. This distributed education would lead to greater institutional competition for students and a learning environment that can be personalized and geared for each individual learner. Luker sees ebooks as the locus for this vision of e-education, thus providing a very rich market for ebooks in higher education.

Mitch Freedman encouraged the ebook industry and publishers to view libraries as allies. Libraries have long, established roots and continue to thrive, "while the dot-coms bomb." Contrary to popular belief, librarians do not fear that ebooks will put them out of business, and, in fact, ebooks are natural for libraries. The ebook industry should view libraries as laboratories for ebooks and e-publishing. However, widespread adoption of ebooks in libraries will not happen until there is a pricing model that works in favor of libraries and the reading public and industry standards are agreed to and employed.

Many members of the press were drawn to the final day of the conference in order to hear James Billington, Librarian of Congress, speak. His eloquently delivered message was that libraries are hospitals for the human soul, and digital resources ("the greatest upheaval in the transmission of knowledge since the invention of the printing press") raises the question whether libraries will continue to serve in that role. Billington outlined three separate, sequential needs if American libraries are to sustain their role. The first is to place on the Internet educational content that is free and of dependable quality. The second is to ensure the technology needed to access the content is widely available. Third, human mediators are needed at the local level who can serve the community by integrating this new online knowledge and technology with the established infrastructure. Although progress has been made on the second need, the first and third are seriously lacking. People need a trustworthy, human face to mediate the massive amounts of knowledge of varying quality available online, and one school librarian for every 1,000 students does not do it.

Andrew Pace, Head of Systems at North Carolina State University, reminded the audience that our concentration should be on the content (the digital bits) and not the hardware and software. Libraries need to escape the limitations of ebook hardware and software, but this can only happen with standards. Pace referred to digital rights management as the publishing industry's revenge on the copying machine. He brought attention to the several epublishing initiatives, such as those by the University of California Press and National Academy Press, where content is given away free online (and this has been found to stimulate print sales).

Betty Day of the University of Maryland spoke about a virtual resource sharing program, the Maryland Digital Library, which went live in July 2000. The 51 participating higher education institutions purchased a consortial collection of netLibrary titles. Day described the project as a successful example of virtual, cooperative collection building.

Chris Rippel, Head of Continuing Education for the Central Kansas Library System, described how ebooks could improve library services, if given the right technology. Rippel emphasized the fact that libraries are an excellent way for ebooks to penetrate the market of potential readers. He noted the findings of the Rochester Electronic Book Evaluation Project, which found that after reading on an ebook device, 40% of library patrons wanted to read their next book in ebook format and another 15% stated no preference between an ebook or paper book. Rippel pointed to Kalamazoo Public Library as an example of a library that has improved its services with the use of ebooks. As part of Kalamazoo's Audible.com audio ebook project, a patron can request a title not currently owned by the library. If the title falls within predetermined parameters, the library staff is authorized to purchase the title for immediate circulation.

e-Textbooks:

Although there was a great deal of disappointment expressed about the slow growth of ebooks as trade publications, there was almost unanimity in regards to the great potential for e-textbooks. Tom Diaz of Adobe stated that Adobe is very interested in the education market. To this end, Adobe is investigating ways to accommodate rights management with the fact that on average a college student accesses 3 or 4 computer terminals each day (Press Release regarding the launch of Adobe's eBook U project). Randall Walker from Walker Technologies described how his LiveInk product, if incorporated into e-textbooks, could dramatically improve reading comprehension. LiveInk reformats a text by syntactically parsing each sentence, thereby eliminating the need to track long lines of horizontal text. A yearlong study with a 9th grade world history class found that students that used a LiveInk version of the textbook had a mean score of 76 on the final exam, compared to the mean score of 66 for students who used the published, paper version of the textbook.

Tom Peters, Director of the Center for Library Initiatives at the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, reported on a joint project at Eureka College and Spoon River College in Fall 2001 to provide pre-loaded course-related content on Franklin eBookMan and RCA REB1100. A full report is available online at http://www.geocities.com/lbell927/eBkFinal. Peters outlined 6 key factors for the success of ebooks in college courses: type of institution; nature of the course; course discipline; type of ebook; type of content and immersion level.

Carloz Bazzarella of Poliplus Software described his company's SmartReader, an ebook software specifically designed for interactive math, science and engineering content. His demonstration of e-textbooks included interactive models and dynamically generated quizzes and demonstrations. See http://www.poliplus.com/index.htm for a demonstration.

Andras Nannetti of Rovia demonstrated the RovReader software, which is currently being used by Thomson Learning, Houghton Mifflin and Pearson Education for the creation of web-based e-textbooks. Instead of an outright purchase, students subscribe to the e-textbooks for a semester at a time, at a price 50-70% less than the list purchase price. For a list of currently available titles and a free demo of the software, go to Rovia's website at http://www.rovia.com/.

Author Perspective:

Warren Adler, author of numerous books including The War of the Roses and Random Hearts, shared his experiences over the past year with ebooks. Using $100,000 of his own money, Adler secured the digital rights to all of his backlist novels, formatted the texts in every available ebook format and print-on-demand configuration and began marketing the ebooks through on-line booksellers and his own website. Adler reported that after several months of activity, he is beginning to see a revenue flow. Moreover, he is building a more personal relationship with his readers through his website, email messages and an e-newsletter. He is very encouraged by the preliminary results and plans to continue this ebook venture. The full text of his presentation is available online from Adler's website.

More Information:

More details about the conference, including conference proceedings, are available from the conference website at http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/ebook2001/index.html. Also, the every faithful Tom Peters has again kindly agreed to share his conference notes, which are available online.



	Table of Contents > Main Articles

	Report from NIST/NISO Electronic Book 2001 Conference The mood of this year's Electronic Book conference, sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) was quite somber in comparison with last year's conference. Absent were many of the "big guns" from last year-- netLibrary's vendor booth stood vacant; Gemstar's booth was empty save a stack of brochures; Microsoft was a no-show; the presentation by the Senior VP of Reciprocal (a digital rights management vendor) was abruptly canceled when the company folded the week prior to the conference. Add to this the heightened security all around Washington DC which served as a constant reminder of the tragedy of 9/11, and it is no wonder that the atmosphere of the conference was so solemn. (A special thanks to Tom Peters for sharing his conference notes with me, upon which the following is heavily based!) Librarians & Educators: There were a few bright spots, though. The first is that librarians and educators were given a more prominent role at this year's conference. Included among the opening speakers were Mark Luker, Vice President of Educause and Mitch Freedman, President-elect of the American Library Association. Luker described a high-tech future of higher education where time (courses need not start at the same time for each student) and geographic location are irrelevant. This distributed education would lead to greater institutional competition for students and a learning environment that can be personalized and geared for each individual learner. Luker sees ebooks as the locus for this vision of e-education, thus providing a very rich market for ebooks in higher education. Mitch Freedman encouraged the ebook industry and publishers to view libraries as allies. Libraries have long, established roots and continue to thrive, "while the dot-coms bomb." Contrary to popular belief, librarians do not fear that ebooks will put them out of business, and, in fact, ebooks are natural for libraries. The ebook industry should view libraries as laboratories for ebooks and e-publishing. However, widespread adoption of ebooks in libraries will not happen until there is a pricing model that works in favor of libraries and the reading public and industry standards are agreed to and employed. Many members of the press were drawn to the final day of the conference in order to hear James Billington, Librarian of Congress, speak. His eloquently delivered message was that libraries are hospitals for the human soul, and digital resources ("the greatest upheaval in the transmission of knowledge since the invention of the printing press") raises the question whether libraries will continue to serve in that role. Billington outlined three separate, sequential needs if American libraries are to sustain their role. The first is to place on the Internet educational content that is free and of dependable quality. The second is to ensure the technology needed to access the content is widely available. Third, human mediators are needed at the local level who can serve the community by integrating this new online knowledge and technology with the established infrastructure. Although progress has been made on the second need, the first and third are seriously lacking. People need a trustworthy, human face to mediate the massive amounts of knowledge of varying quality available online, and one school librarian for every 1,000 students does not do it. Andrew Pace, Head of Systems at North Carolina State University, reminded the audience that our concentration should be on the content (the digital bits) and not the hardware and software. Libraries need to escape the limitations of ebook hardware and software, but this can only happen with standards. Pace referred to digital rights management as the publishing industry's revenge on the copying machine. He brought attention to the several epublishing initiatives, such as those by the University of California Press and National Academy Press, where content is given away free online (and this has been found to stimulate print sales). Betty Day of the University of Maryland spoke about a virtual resource sharing program, the Maryland Digital Library, which went live in July 2000. The 51 participating higher education institutions purchased a consortial collection of netLibrary titles. Day described the project as a successful example of virtual, cooperative collection building. Chris Rippel, Head of Continuing Education for the Central Kansas Library System, described how ebooks could improve library services, if given the right technology. Rippel emphasized the fact that libraries are an excellent way for ebooks to penetrate the market of potential readers. He noted the findings of the Rochester Electronic Book Evaluation Project, which found that after reading on an ebook device, 40% of library patrons wanted to read their next book in ebook format and another 15% stated no preference between an ebook or paper book. Rippel pointed to Kalamazoo Public Library as an example of a library that has improved its services with the use of ebooks. As part of Kalamazoo's Audible.com audio ebook project, a patron can request a title not currently owned by the library. If the title falls within predetermined parameters, the library staff is authorized to purchase the title for immediate circulation. e-Textbooks: Although there was a great deal of disappointment expressed about the slow growth of ebooks as trade publications, there was almost unanimity in regards to the great potential for e-textbooks. Tom Diaz of Adobe stated that Adobe is very interested in the education market. To this end, Adobe is investigating ways to accommodate rights management with the fact that on average a college student accesses 3 or 4 computer terminals each day (Press Release regarding the launch of Adobe's eBook U project). Randall Walker from Walker Technologies described how his LiveInk product, if incorporated into e-textbooks, could dramatically improve reading comprehension. LiveInk reformats a text by syntactically parsing each sentence, thereby eliminating the need to track long lines of horizontal text. A yearlong study with a 9th grade world history class found that students that used a LiveInk version of the textbook had a mean score of 76 on the final exam, compared to the mean score of 66 for students who used the published, paper version of the textbook. Tom Peters, Director of the Center for Library Initiatives at the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, reported on a joint project at Eureka College and Spoon River College in Fall 2001 to provide pre-loaded course-related content on Franklin eBookMan and RCA REB1100. A full report is available online at http://www.geocities.com/lbell927/eBkFinal. Peters outlined 6 key factors for the success of ebooks in college courses: type of institution; nature of the course; course discipline; type of ebook; type of content and immersion level. Carloz Bazzarella of Poliplus Software described his company's SmartReader, an ebook software specifically designed for interactive math, science and engineering content. His demonstration of e-textbooks included interactive models and dynamically generated quizzes and demonstrations. See http://www.poliplus.com/index.htm for a demonstration. Andras Nannetti of Rovia demonstrated the RovReader software, which is currently being used by Thomson Learning, Houghton Mifflin and Pearson Education for the creation of web-based e-textbooks. Instead of an outright purchase, students subscribe to the e-textbooks for a semester at a time, at a price 50-70% less than the list purchase price. For a list of currently available titles and a free demo of the software, go to Rovia's website at http://www.rovia.com/. Author Perspective: Warren Adler, author of numerous books including The War of the Roses and Random Hearts, shared his experiences over the past year with ebooks. Using $100,000 of his own money, Adler secured the digital rights to all of his backlist novels, formatted the texts in every available ebook format and print-on-demand configuration and began marketing the ebooks through on-line booksellers and his own website. Adler reported that after several months of activity, he is beginning to see a revenue flow. Moreover, he is building a more personal relationship with his readers through his website, email messages and an e-newsletter. He is very encouraged by the preliminary results and plans to continue this ebook venture. The full text of his presentation is available online from Adler's website. More Information: More details about the conference, including conference proceedings, are available from the conference website at http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/ebook2001/index.html. Also, the every faithful Tom Peters has again kindly agreed to share his conference notes, which are available online.

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