Online education, both by for-profit institutions and within traditional universities, has seen recent tremendous growth and appeal - but online education has many aspects that are not well understood. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Online Education provides a thorough and engaging reference on all aspects of this field, from the theoretical dimensions of teaching online to the technological aspects of implementing online courses–with a central focus on the effective education of students.This entry focuses on E-books: An e-book is a book-length text document in digital form that is formatted to be read on electronic screens such as e-readers, computers, tablets, and mobile phones

Adams, Tina M.

NC DOCKS at Western Carolina University

English

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

The SAGE Encyclopedia of OnlineEducationE-BooksContributors: Tina M. AdamsEdited by: Steven L. DanverBook Title: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Online EducationChapter Title: "E-Books"Pub. Date: 2016Access Date: September 27, 2016Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.City: Thousand Oaks,Print ISBN: 9781483318356Online ISBN: 9781483318332DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483318332.n119Print pages: 367-371©2016 SAGE Publications, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination ofthe online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.An e-book is a book-length text document in digital form that is formatted to be read onelectronic screens such as e-readers, computers, tablets, and mobile phones. E-booksusually have the traditional elements of a print book, such as tables of contents, title pages,indexes, and page numbers. Like print books, e-books include books from trade publishers(popular works) and scholarly publishers, including university presses, as well as referencepublishers. The focus of this entry is on the scholarly and reference publishers thattraditionally serve the academic market. This entry discusses the evolution of e-books,including the influence of e-readers and the development of Google Books. It then discussesthe use of e-books in academic libraries and the growing popularity of e-books.First-generation e-books (1990–1999) were available only on the Internet and were notdownloadable. There was no off-line access, and the e-books were viewable only on adesktop or laptop computer. These early e-book sites contained only texts available in thepublic domain, meaning they were no longer under copyright protection or were a work thatfailed to meet the requirements for copyright protection and could be used freely withoutpermission. Examples include materials available through Project Gutenberg (classic works ofliterature and reference works) or the Perseus Project (a collection of ancient Greek texts).This was an important advancement in making research available to scholars and makinglarge collections available online. These e-books were also a leap forward with regard toutilizing aspects of multimedia, such as dictionary definitions and images delivered alongsiderelevant text, but they were less useful for the average student as the collections were mostlylimited to classical works.Second-generation e-books (2000–2006) were still not very popular with readers as theexperience of reading an e-book from cover to cover on a computer was not very enjoyable.Though some readers adopted PDAs (personal digital assistants), these devices were notubiquitous, so for most users, reading an e-book required the user to be tied to a desktopcomputer or a laptop to read. At that time, e-books were often consulted only if the print bookwas inaccessible or unavailable, such as by distance education students. Increasingly,reference materials such as the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Oxford English Dictionarywere adopted online. These materials are especially suited to online usability since users donot read a reference book in its entirety but rather look up information on a particular subjectand read only a portion of it. Unlike traditional books, reference books quickly became popularas e-books.E-Readers and E-BooksThe launch of the Kindle e-reader in 2007 is often regarded as the beginning of theacceptance by consumers of e-reader technology. It revolutionized the e-reader market,sparking a boom in the trade of e-book publishing. Much of the commercial success ofindividual e-readers has been linked to the ability to purchase and download books directlyfrom large e-book vendors such as Barnes & Noble and Amazon, who have each developedand marketed their own readers, the Nook and the Kindle, respectively. Hence, different e-readers support different formats, and this has fragmented the e-book market. Even so,Amazon has now become the largest retailer of e-books in the United States and announcedin 2011 that its e-book sales have now outpaced its print book sales. A Pew Research Centerstudy confirms that e-reading is on the rise; in January 2014, Pew reported that 28% ofAmericans surveyed had read an e-book in the previous year, up from 23% in 2012.SAGE SAGE ReferenceContact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com.The SAGE Encyclopedia of Online EducationPage 2 of 5  E-Books and Google BooksIn 2004, Google entered the e-books field when it unveiled Google Books, which digitizedbook content acquired from publishers and displayed the content. Some publishers sawGoogle Books as a way to gain publicity for their books and drive up sales, since only aportion of the book was made available for free. Far more controversial was the Google PrintLibrary Project, where Google digitized book content, mostly nonfiction and out-of-print titles,from major research libraries. The Google Print Library Project does not put entire booksonline for free. If a book is still protected by copyright, the user’s search results will show onlythe brief section of the book that includes the word or phrase searched and the page numberit appears on, along with details about the book.In 2005, the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild of America launched aclass action lawsuit against Google claiming copyright infringement. A settlement wasoriginally reached in 2008 that would require Google to compensate authors and publishers,but in 2011, a New York federal judge rejected the legal settlement. In 2013, the judge issueda ruling saying that Google’s use of the works was “fair use” under copyright law. “Fair use” isan exception to copyright law that allows portions of the copyrighted work to be used incertain instances, usually by altering or using the original work in a new “transformative” way.The judge deemed that providing snippets of book text facilitated book searching in a waysimilar to a library catalog and constitutes a transformative use and so dismissed the case.E-Book Use in Academic LibrariesNetLibrary was one of the first e-book providers to begin selling e-books from scholarly bookpublishers to the academic library market. NetLibrary was founded in 1998, launched in 2000,and followed a traditional purchasing model. It sold e-books on a title-by-title basis at thehardcover edition price plus an annual maintenance fee or a one-time perpetual access fee of50% of the cost of the book price. In addition to the somewhat cumbersome pricing model,there were weaknesses in its delivery model that did not take advantage of the electronicenvironment and restricted the use of its e-books to one user at a time to mirror traditionallending practices, as well as limiting or prohibiting printing and downloading. OCLC (OnlineComputer Library Center) purchased the assets of NetLibrary from bankruptcy in 2002 toprotect libraries’ investments in e-book content purchases. It was not until OCLC soldNetLibrary to EBSCO that new purchase and licensing models evolved that would ensuregreater access to the important e-book resources in which many libraries had alreadyinvested.Another key academic e-book provider was ebrary. Founded in 1999, ebrary has been largelysuccessful in the academic market and was acquired by ProQuest in 2011. Both EBSCO(NetLibrary) and ebrary as well as most other e-book providers now are served on platformsthat add online functionality such as dictionary lookup, annotation tools, highlighting tools, in-text search capabilities, and the ability to download and read off-line on mobile or portabledevices. In addition, many vendors such as ebrary and EBSCO have a solution that allows thee-books to be read with screen reader technology such as JAWS (Job Access With Speech).Historically, e-books were print books that were converted to digital format and had little, ifany, of this functionality. Now, some titles are “born digital,” meaning that they have neverbeen published in print and are only available as e-books, though this is still much rarer thanborn-digital journals. More commonly, books are published in print first and then published asan e-book several months later. However, some books are still not available as e-books; forSAGE SAGE ReferenceContact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com.The SAGE Encyclopedia of Online EducationPage 3 of 5  example, books with the potential for course adoption, especially textbooks, are rarelyavailable for institutional purchase. However, a trend is developing where booksellers such asAmazon, Barnes & Noble, and eCampus are offering, for rent or purchase, textbooks as e-books as a more convenient and often more affordable option for students.Unfortunately, there is still inconsistency in the e-books lending model concerning institutionalpurchase or subscription, as individual titles may vary with regard to the number of users, or“seats,” that can be purchased for a given title. Some titles can be purchased with unlimitedusers, some with multiusers (usually three simultaneous users), and some only allow singleusers (only one user may access the book at a time). Titles can also be offered either as“nonlinear lending” titles, which allow an unlimited amount of concurrent loans for a maximumof 325 loan days per year, or as “textbook” loans, which limit the title to three users at a timefor downloading, with a limit of 325 loan days per year. And almost all models make the bookunavailable to other users for the loan period (usually 7 to 14 days) if the book is downloadedrather than just read online, again mimicking the traditional print book checkout model.However, if the title has been purchased with multiusers (three users), then only one seat isused when the book is downloaded. The other two users/seats can still be used to view the e-book online.E-Book UsageA snapshot of academic libraries shows that e-book use is on the rise at most institutions. Notso long ago, e-book usage was very low at academic institutions mainly due to limitedscholarly publishing of e-books, restrictive reading and download environments set bypublishers, and low adoption of e-reader and other mobile devices. Most publishers now offere-book options for their titles, and data from a 2006 study showed that though print circulationat academic libraries has gone down, e-book circulation at some academic libraries has risento account for about 23% of the total circulation, reaching nearly the level of print bookcirculation. Format is becoming less of a constraint, and content is the most important factoras evidenced by a 2011 survey reported by Allen McKiel, which showed 54% of studentsusing e-books. Of that number, 74% reported using e-books for research or assignments,while 79% reported using print books for research or assignments. Other studies confirm thatusers choose e-books because they are convenient to use when working from home and aresearchable.Many studies have shown that e-books are especially popular in education, medicine,psychology, computing, and the science, technology, engineering, and math fields. Notsurprisingly, computer science books are by far the most popular e-books in academiclibraries. This is most likely due to the importance of currency in this field as well as thelikelihood that computer scientists value e-books as the information is delivered online at theirpoint of need. In the social sciences, business, and literature, a single title was equally likelyto be used in print and e-book format. Humanities scholars remain somewhat more reluctantto embrace the use of e-books, with a survey at the University of Denver showing 68% of allhumanities researchers (comprising art and art history, English, history, religion, languagesand literature, music, philosophy, and theater) reporting that they would always prefer theprint version over an e-book. However, as publishing of quality e-book collections continues togrow in the humanities—for example, Books at JSTOR’s collections including Manuscript ofWomen’s Letters and Diaries and Oxford Scholarship Online—humanities researchers mayfind e-books beneficial and become less averse to using them.Ownership of devices on which to read e-book content is also widespread. A Pew surveySAGE SAGE ReferenceContact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com.The SAGE Encyclopedia of Online EducationPage 4 of 5  found that, as of January 2014, 42% of adults owned tablet computers and 32% of adultsowned an e-book reading device such as a Kindle or Nook reader. As of the time of thesurvey, 50% of American adults had a dedicated handheld device—a tablet, an e-reader, orboth—for reading electronic content, and with the continued popularity of these devices, thatnumber will likely continue to grow. This is a critical turning point as portability is crucial to thefuture viability of e-books.Functionality of e-books offered to academic libraries continues to improve. As morepublishers increase functionality, such as instituting more liberal downloading and printingpolicies and the ability to download e-books to e-readers and other mobile devices, studentuse will likely continue to increase. However, interoperability is still a concern in a publishingworld where most publishers are not adhering to the EPUB standard and downloadingacademic e-books is still a cumbersome process. Inconsistent lending models also make for aconfusing e-book environment.See alsoE-ReadersTina M. Adamshttp://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483318332.n11910.4135/9781483318332.n119Further ReadingsBailey, T. P. (2006). Electronic book usage at a master’s Level I university: A longitudinalstudy. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 32(1), 52–55.Cox, J. (2009). Making sense of e-book usage. In W. Miller & R. M. Pellen (Eds.), Adapting toe-books (pp. 33–52). New York, NY: Routledge.Fischer, K. S., Wright, M., Clatanoff, K., Barton, H., & Shreeves, E. (2012). Give ’em whatthey want: A one-year study of unmediated patron-driven acquisition of e-books. College &Research Libraries, 73(5), 469–492.Kachaluba, S. B., Brady, J. E., & Critten, J. (2014). Developing humanities collections in thedigital age: Exploring humanities faculty engagement with electronic and print resources.College & Research Libraries, 75(1), 91–108.Kelly, H. (2014, April 29). Authors’ case against Google Books dismissed. CNN. Retrievedfrom http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/14/tech/web/google-books-verdict/index.htmlLevine-Clark, M. (2007). Electronic books and the humanities: A survey at the University ofDenver. Collection Building, 26(1), ;7–14.Littman, J., & Connaway, L. S. (2004). A circulation analysis of print books and e-books in anacademic research library. Library Resources & Technical Services, 48(4), 256–262.Marshall, C. C. (2011). Fourth generation ebooks: Keynote for JCDL 2011 Workshop onSemant ic  Web Technologies f o r  L i b r a r i e s  a n d  R e a d e r s . R e t r i e v e d  f r o mhttp://www.csdl.tamu.edu/~marshall/ebook-redux.pdfMcKiel, A. (2012). 2011 Global student e-book survey. Proceedings of the Charleston LibraryConference. Retrieved from http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/charleston/2011/Acquisitions/10/Primary Research Group.(2010). Library use of eBooks, 2011 edition. New York, NY: PrimaryResearch Group.Zickuhr, K., & Rainie, L. (2014). E-Reading rises as device ownership jumps. Retrieved fromhttp://www.pewinternet.org/2014/01/16/e-reading-rises-as-device-ownership-jumps/SAGE SAGE ReferenceContact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com.The SAGE Encyclopedia of Online EducationPage 5 of 5  

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Online Education: E-Books

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