A Comparison Study in Advantages and Disadvantages of
|
|
While electronic books have been possible for a few decades, it has not been until the last
few years that the technology to produce them has been sufficient enough so that they could be
compared with paper books to any extent. Unfortunately, research seems to show that they have
yet to reach their potential as paper books are still more useful and favourable in many areas.
Electronic books, however, do have their advantages, such as multimedia capabilities, but again
few people feel that electronic books use multimedia features as well as they are capable of.
Electronic books also have the limitations of current technology in the sense that computer
displays lack the clarity to view electronic books properly. It is felt, however, that this weakness
will be overcome within the next five years. Electronic books have the real advantages over
paper books in that they are cheaper to make and reproduce, as well as they possess portability
and search capabilities. Once electronic books can overcome technology disadvantages, they are
bound to give more competition to paper books.
With a much greater emphasis on the electronic transferring of information in recent years and predictions that this will only grow, it is not surprising to find that the industry of electronic books is growing as well. While some people immediately see the values and possibilities that electronic books hold over their paper-form counterparts, others see them as greatly lacking in comparison to paper books. This paper will attempt to investigate how well electronic books compare to paper books, and where they need to improve if they ever hope to replace paper books.
Electronic books are very much what one would think them to be, books that can be read through a computer. They can be simply an unformatted text file which one is forced to read from beginning to end, but more frequently these are written in a form called hypertext or hypermedia. Hypertext allows one to skip around a document in an associative manner. This is done by the linking of a collection of nodes or notecards. These nodes can contain within them: text, audio, video, animation, graphics, sound and such. Any multimedia CD-ROM encyclopedia, such as Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia or Encarta give a good example of what currently is being done with hypertext (Ulanoff 115).
The word "electronic books" was coined in the late 60's by Andres van Dam, a research
scientist and a pioneer in user-interface languages, and although the idea had existed for much
longer than that, it has not been till the last decade that electronic books have emerged at all. It
was not until the 1980's when the machines needed to run them were affordable enough for
everyday use. Since then, thanks to increasingly faster and more powerful computers, and
especially with the arrival of CD-ROM drives and the greater access to the "Information
Highway" of the Internet, electronic books are used more everyday by the common
person (Reynolds 263-264).
In the late 1980's various research studies were conducted, involving electronic books in
comparison with paper books. These studies seem to overview the general perceptions, and show
how they relate in the real world.
In 1986, a survey was conducted on a group of computer science students to obtain their opinions on whether they thought it was better to have online textbooks (textbooks on computer) with annotations as opposed to paper textbooks, and similarly how they thought of fiction done the same way. Although the researchers admitted this survey would be biased, given the students had not seen either forms, they thought it would show general perceptions. Data obtained from the survey indicated that the students thought having online textbooks would be a great advantage; contrary, they thought that having online fiction would be a great disadvantage (Nielson 152). Coover, a book reviewer for The New Year Times, similarly observed that many readers would be sceptical about looking at a computer screen to read a hypertext novel. He observed that the reader would not want to start something he/she could not finish and would be afraid that he/she would miss something important because of the multiplicity of paths that a reader can take when reading a hypertext novel ("Hyperfiction" 10).
Another study on perceptions was done in 1989 using sixteen high school students. The students were asked to use both online and paper textbook versions of Grolier's Academic Encyclopedia and compare the two. What was found was that half of the students felt they could obtain information more quickly with the online version, three of them felt that the online version contained more information, and one student felt that the online version was more up to date. It should be noted that both books were exactly the same (Nielson 153).
A study that Jakob Nielson, author of Hypertext and Hypermedia, did himself in 1990
found that 33% of users of electronic books complain that it is not as convenient to read a
document in hypertext as it is with paper. Typical comments included the lack of ease while
reading electronic books on a train or even at home as it takes more planning to start up a
computer as compared to just picking up a paper document (115).
Research was done in 1983 and 1984 comparing how proofreading rated using the same text on paper and on computer. Proofreading on paper was significantly less time-consuming taking only 21 minutes in comparison to electronic proofreading taking 29 minutes (Nielson 117). On the other hand, similar research in 1987 with more advanced computer displays showed that the two were practically the same. It did, however, find that after 50 minutes the errors made in proofreading on computer increased quite dramatically (computer users had 39% errors whereas those proofreading a paper book had 25%). The researchers thought that this indicated that reading computer screens tired people more than reading papers (Nielson 118).
The most important research, however, was conducted in 1987. It took electronic and paper versions of historical articles taking up to 138 pages in paper form and comparing the ease of searching both of them. In one test, the subjects were asked to answer questions based at the start of the article. The paper version proved faster taking subjects an average of 22 seconds to reply versus 42 seconds in the case of the electronic versions. When questions were based upon the body of the text, the timings were closer; however, paper still won out 58 seconds versus 51 seconds with electronic articles. Both took the same time when information was taken from two separate articles. The researchers felt that this seemed to indicate that hypertext was of help in situations where readers had to jump around to obtain the information they wished, whereas it slowed down the user where the information could be obtained from just glancing at the page (Nielson 152).
Philip Seyer, author of Understanding Hypertext: Concepts and Applications, puts some doubt into the research stating that this research investigated only simple accessing tasks, and he felt that although research did not reflect the true searching capabilities of electronic books, there was some evidence that information could be found much faster in hypertext, especially in a complex search (91).
Research from 1989 would seem to support Seyer's claims, when studies were done using
electronic and paper versions of statistics books. In this case, the paper version was still faster
when users were asked to find key words, (3.5 minutes versus 4.4 minutes). The researchers felt
they obtained these results because the questions were based on book headings. In contrast,
when questions asked were based from within the body of the text, the electronic version was
much faster, taking only 4.3 minutes whereas paper searches took 7.5 minutes. An additional
experiment was done with essays that used either the paper versions or electronic versions to
base their research on. In unbiased marking, those essays that used the electronic versions scored
significantly higher with 5.8 average out of 7 in comparison to 3.6 average of those essays based
on paper versions (Nielson 153-154).
It seems that much of what would be considered advantages with electronic books, are
disadvantages as well. This seems most apparent in the areas of multimedia, screen
technology, technological advantages that electronic books are supposed to have, and present
electronic books themselves.
Multimedia is one of the best examples of the advantages and disadvantages that
electronic books face. Considered to be one of the major advantages of electronic books,
multimedia seems to have failed to reach its potential. Alvin, author of "Jack in the Text",
summed up the current state of multimedia by stating:
"Multimedia gets boring, with stale images, sound and text arbitrarily thrown
together without much artistic sense. Unfortunately, a lot of people in control of
expensive multimedia technology are about as inspired as a wet napkin. The
potential, however is great, if real writers, visual artists, filmmakers, and
musicians could ever get together." (496-497)
Relatedly, The Economist noted various problems with current multimedia technology. It felt
that pictures did not have the sharpness and richness of a good quality printing, as well as the fact
that some computers were not fast enough to show a picture with any sort of speed.
Additionally, the video clips used in multimedia are in small frames that notably twitch and blur
because any smooth running image would use too much storage space and overload the
computer's processor. Finally, sound could easily be over compressed containing nuance and
background noise. The magazine did note, however, that as computers become faster and cheaper, these problems
will disappear (The Economist 83).
Another major problem with reading electronic books seems to be the computer screens
we are forced to use. Olson, author of "Publishing without Paper", pointed out that many
computers still have only low-resolution displays (6), and The Economist went on to state in
what ways screens would have to be improved for the text to be read on them easily. It felt that
screens needed to have three times the contrast ratio, twenty times the pixels (each being an
individual picture element, so the greater the number, the higher the resolution) and twice the
refresh-rate (the frequency in which the screen is redrawn) of screens today. However, the magazine did go
on to say that such screens exist, and while extremely expensive ($200,000 for one that Xerox
sells) and well out of the range of the average buyer, prices should fall to reasonable ranges
within the next five years (The Economist 83). Another screen, a monochrome one, has also
been developed by Central Research Laboratories (CRL) for laptop computers. CRL felt that
their screen kept the clarity of the image, even after turning off the screen and would use less
battery power while scrolling through text. Fox, author of "Electronic books look good on
paper", felt that this "liquid crystal display unveiled this week could finally make electronic
books a viable competitor to printed paper" (20). Regardless of current screen technology
disadvantages, one advantage that electronic books currently have over paper books is the ability
to enlarge the size of the text up to four times its size, for ease of reading (Olson 5).
One of the greatest advantages electronic books seem to have is a cost advantage. Reynolds and Derose, coauthors of "Electronic Books", noted that often mastering a CD-ROM (putting the information onto a CD-ROM) would cost less than typesetting a book, especially considering the fact that nearly all publishers create documents on computer. They further observed that companies that use large complicated manuals, which cost as much as $1,000 per copy to produce could be made on a CD-ROM for less than $5 each (264).
In addition, there is the portability of electronic books. Coover stated that "you could now carry an entire library around with you that takes up less space and weighs less than a single book" ("And Hypertext" 8). Martin, author of Hyperdocuments and How to Create Them, noted the necessity of having smaller and more easily transported documents in quoting the Pacific Telesis Annual Report of 1987, which stated that while in the early nineteenth century the world's information doubled every half century, it has now risen to double every three years (10). Having books electronically also allows the books to be updated as efficiently and often as necessary.
Another prime advantage of electronic books is their search capabilities. While research mentioned above seems to question the usability of electronic books for more simple searches, authorities such as Alvin and Coover believe that faster and more efficient searches are possible than with paper books, which makes researching, quote-taking, or finding specific information much easier (Coover "And Hypertext" 8) (Alvin 497). Kenner, a professor of English and author of "Electronic Books", however, questions the relevance of having search capabilities with electronic books containing classic literature, such as Jane Austen's novel Emma for example. "I've really no immediate use for the software that can tell me Emma uses the word the 1479 times . . . " (404).
Martin mentioned a number of other advantages that documents written in hypertext
could offer, even though he never stated whether these were in use or not. Beyond mentioning
the obvious features of multimedia, he went on to mention the possibilities such as having
intelligence built into the documents. This would be done through the document asking the user
questions and directing them towards where the user might find what they were looking for. He
also mentioned that documents could have reusable pieces of information found in various
places, such as linking to a glossary. In addition, portions of a document could be hidden for
security reasons or to avoid confusing the reader (12). However, what Martin stated as the
advantage of being able to mark the document allowing the reader to return to the place they left
off is questioned by Olson who felt that no such adequate way yet existed (Olson 6).
The views on present electronic books tend to vary but most reviewers generally have negative feelings that electronic books have not met their potentials. Kenner felt that electronic books were simply "recycling the offerings of a previous medium" and thought it was more comfortable to read a small book than sit in front of a computer screen (404).
Other reviewers feel that electronic encyclopedias fail to reach their potential. Goodman, contributing editor for PC World, while thinking that 1995 Grolier's Multimedia Encyclopedia had an impressive list of subjects, he felt that most of the entries were too short (315). The Economist similarly found 1994 Encarta lacking the quality of information and considered the search facilities too crude (83). Still, some electronic encyclopedias already have higher sales than their paper counterparts. Random House reports that it has sold 400,000 electronic encyclopedias since 1990 as compared to 100,000 of its similar one-volume paper encyclopedias (Olson 5).
The books that did rate higher were of a different sort. The Economist thought that The
Halderman Diaries, which contains the diaries and home videos of H.R. Halderman (President
Nixon's chief of staff), were original and intelligent (83). Goodman thought that the CD-ROM
version of Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of Time was as good or even better than the
original text (315).
While the electronic books industry is starting to grow, it seems apparent that it is far
from reaching what some people consider to be a tremendous potential. If electronic books hope
to replace paper books one day, they must overcome certain perceptions towards them. Many of the
difficulties seem to stem from technology, so there is little doubt that when these can be truly overcome, will electronic books start to overtake paper books.
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
Page created by Dave A. Law
Copyright © 1997 by Dave A. Law Permission to reprint, if and only if, you e-mail me first.
|
Best experienced with |
|
|