Monday, October 31, 2011

Digital Libraries

Hillesund, Terje, and Jon E. Noring. "Digital Libraries and the Need for a Universal Digital Publication Format." Journal of Electronic Publishing 9, no. 2 (Summer 2006). doi:10.3998/3336451.0009.203.

This article isn't about the correlation between teenagers, digital readers, and literacy, but it is about electronic books, which directly affects my topic. In fact, Hillesund and Noring talk about how the multiple and different formats of electronic books, of usability issues in such formats, is preventing ebooks from becoming truly popular. This factor could also prevent literacy from increasing in teenagers through digital readers.

Summary:

Hillesund and Noring start out by explaining how digital libraries aren't being utilized like they should be because the plethora of different formats discourages use and creates usability issues. the four parts of this article:
  1. define and describe "digital reading"
  2. give a brief historical explanation
  3. place OpenReader in the historical context
  4. discuss the potential use of OpenReader format in digital libraries
Screen reading—known as digital reading—includes any sort of reading of digital material, such as email, text, websites, ebooks, etc. Reading is both intentional, for entertainment or knowledge, or functional, when web browsing, searching databases, or writing.

The idea of a universal digital format has certain requirements:
  • "Interoperability: The eBook industry (...) should be able to exchange eBooks independent of software and hardware."
  • "Extensibility: An eBook standard should be able to be extended to include new functionalities such as multimedia and user interaction."
  • "Applicability: An eBook format should be easily applicable to various kinds of related fields such as database system and wireless Internet."
  • "Openness: An eBook standard should be independent of a particular vendor. That is it must be an opened standard that is freely accessible."
  • Typographical Richness: "The format must have adequate internal structural resolution and presentation richness to allow very high typographic quality presentation."
  • Adaptability: "The format must allow end-users some altitude of control over the presentation parameters for personal needs and reading preferences, such as font size and other typographic settings. (...) A corollary of this requirement is that the format must be fully reflowable (...) in response to differing presentation hardware and end-user settings."
  • International: "The format must be capable of representing any language and glyph set in use today. The format is not universal unless it is truly international." (5-6)
Apparently, many ebook formats now are based somewhat on print formats, which aren't suitable for use with modern technology.

My Reflections:

A universal format would make it easier to combine different ebooks purchased or acquired from different devices or formats into one device. It might also make it more likely that ebooks will then be used by more people, such as teenagers, which could be an important factor in helping to increase literacy.

References:
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