Part 1
Producer-centric development
Back in 1934, Joseph Schumpeter in his book, The Theory of Economic Development, outlined the model of producer-side innovation. In this model, the closed development route of the producer did little to incorporate the needs of the wider user base. Over the past couple of decades and across many sectors we have seen a dramatic shift of power from the organization to the user, where much commercial enterprise is now built around the individual and collective needs of the user-base, and products and services are focused on satisfying these specific needs. Most of this has been unveiled with the development of the internet into a user-driven environment, in its 2.0-3.0 status.
The needs-based paradigm is only now emerging into the mainstream with eBooks. They started off life slowly as an afterthought for many publishers attempting to generate ‘low cost’ revenue from content that already existed, and whose minimal costs were balanced in the print book ledger.
eBooks as print books, electronically
As the demand increased, so more front- and back-list titles were digitized to meet the endless hunger from the users and libraries to provide more content electronically, which comes with its own set of benefits for the library (the main ones are summarized nicely in this Springer whitepaper); however, little changed in the delivery of the actual content in terms of its appearance and functionality. Most academic eBooks these days are still very obviously just electronic copies of the print version. Of course there are exceptions, and organizations behind these will ultimately be responsible for leading the market, but little investment has been undertaken into the underlying functionality of eBooks to meet the end-user needs. Enhancements to eBooks could improve learning effectiveness and ultimately build more robust revenues for publishers by this value-add.
At the moment, many eBook titles are embargoed and released after the print counterpart, often on a set timetable of according to initial volumes of print books sold. It seems a bit counterproductive to ignore the rapid dissemination now available across the internet now, as well as the social layers that help accelerate this discovery to great velocity. Publishers are still fixed on print workflows, which delay the sharing of knowledge, which ultimately is one of the objectives of producing books in any format in the first place.
Joe Wikert from O’Reilly Tools of Change sums it up nicely in a 2012 blog post (although he talks about the wider consumer eBook market, his statement can be applied to the academic segment as well): “Who’s pushing for innovation in the ebook space? Publishers? No, they’re fairly content with quick-and-dirty p-to-e conversions and they’re risk averse when it comes to making big investments in richer content formats.”
Usability challenges
So where is the big problem with this? The mismatch between the publishers churning out eBook titles in 
formats that don’t necessarily make the best of the actual content and don’t meets the needs of the user in terms of learning experience and usability. Char Booth in an article in Library Journal from 2011 talks about “usability challenges at micro and macro levels”. She continues, saying eBooks “tend to be too disparate, DRM-protected, and reminiscent of e-journal content to be accessed or read gracefully”. A further thought on this from Booth is that in the consumer market, e-reading devices have allowed users to curate their own collections, in much the same way as they would have for print books. For the academic library however, things are not so simple. The aspirational ‘digital library’ that publishers have marketed to academic institutions as the future, is far from reach.
The JISC in the UK highlighted concerns back in 2009 in their National e-books Observatory Project that the academic eBook market was struggling to keep up with itself in terms of meeting demand and functionality needs. Some highlights of their report include:
- Over 65% of end-users read eBook from the screen. This high statistic was noted as being down to difficulties downloading and printing (due to DRM issues); particularly evident in the very low number of students reading from printed pages (5%).
- Issues with search: “participants in the focus groups reported some difficulty in finding information in e-books: simple search was not regarded as a useful mechanism since most course texts are designed to be read continuously rather than being chunked into more search friendly encyclopedia-style entries”.
- Poor use of the available screen space – the amount of visible text is often limited by navigation tools and other on-page features
- Navigation tools – often poorly constructed to require scrolling and clicking to move forward, zooming is not optimized
Search and interface
Of those 4 issues listed above, there are two that really stand out – search and user-interface. Search is the basis of much of our online activity these days, and so there is a minimum expectation when it comes to 
products which present information to the user- i.e. that is will be searchable and the search will work well. Basically, if the search doesn’t perform as well as Google, it is probably a failure. The essence of digital media is for the user to find the information they are looking for in the shortest possible time with the minimal effort. Frustration quickly ensues if this process hits any bumps.
The second is about the reading and learning experience of the text itself. Is it still enough to use dated interfaces, HTML web pages (like journal content), or the simple PDF? There are some organizations innovating in this sphere but perhaps their technologies are too experimental for the mainstream academic publishers so far.
Look out for part 2 of this post later this week, which further explores the concept of User-Centered Design and points to ways in which the academic eBook market could adapt its foundations to accommodate a more modern and progressive approach to producing eBooks.
We also have some other posts on eBooks you might be interested in:
User-centered design for academic eBooks – is it important?
29 jan 2013 Filed under: eBooksPart 1
Producer-centric development
Back in 1934, Joseph Schumpeter in his book, The Theory of Economic Development, outlined the model of producer-side innovation. In this model, the closed development route of the producer did little to incorporate the needs of the wider user base. Over the past couple of decades and across many sectors we have seen a dramatic shift of power from the organization to the user, where much commercial enterprise is now built around the individual and collective needs of the user-base, and products and services are focused on satisfying these specific needs. Most of this has been unveiled with the development of the internet into a user-driven environment, in its 2.0-3.0 status.
The needs-based paradigm is only now emerging into the mainstream with eBooks. They started off life slowly as an afterthought for many publishers attempting to generate ‘low cost’ revenue from content that already existed, and whose minimal costs were balanced in the print book ledger.
eBooks as print books, electronically
At the moment, many eBook titles are embargoed and released after the print counterpart, often on a set timetable of according to initial volumes of print books sold. It seems a bit counterproductive to ignore the rapid dissemination now available across the internet now, as well as the social layers that help accelerate this discovery to great velocity. Publishers are still fixed on print workflows, which delay the sharing of knowledge, which ultimately is one of the objectives of producing books in any format in the first place.
Joe Wikert from O’Reilly Tools of Change sums it up nicely in a 2012 blog post (although he talks about the wider consumer eBook market, his statement can be applied to the academic segment as well): “Who’s pushing for innovation in the ebook space? Publishers? No, they’re fairly content with quick-and-dirty p-to-e conversions and they’re risk averse when it comes to making big investments in richer content formats.”
Usability challenges
So where is the big problem with this? The mismatch between the publishers churning out eBook titles in
formats that don’t necessarily make the best of the actual content and don’t meets the needs of the user in terms of learning experience and usability. Char Booth in an article in Library Journal from 2011 talks about “usability challenges at micro and macro levels”. She continues, saying eBooks “tend to be too disparate, DRM-protected, and reminiscent of e-journal content to be accessed or read gracefully”. A further thought on this from Booth is that in the consumer market, e-reading devices have allowed users to curate their own collections, in much the same way as they would have for print books. For the academic library however, things are not so simple. The aspirational ‘digital library’ that publishers have marketed to academic institutions as the future, is far from reach.
The JISC in the UK highlighted concerns back in 2009 in their National e-books Observatory Project that the academic eBook market was struggling to keep up with itself in terms of meeting demand and functionality needs. Some highlights of their report include:
Search and interface
Of those 4 issues listed above, there are two that really stand out – search and user-interface. Search is the basis of much of our online activity these days, and so there is a minimum expectation when it comes to
products which present information to the user- i.e. that is will be searchable and the search will work well. Basically, if the search doesn’t perform as well as Google, it is probably a failure. The essence of digital media is for the user to find the information they are looking for in the shortest possible time with the minimal effort. Frustration quickly ensues if this process hits any bumps.
The second is about the reading and learning experience of the text itself. Is it still enough to use dated interfaces, HTML web pages (like journal content), or the simple PDF? There are some organizations innovating in this sphere but perhaps their technologies are too experimental for the mainstream academic publishers so far.
Look out for part 2 of this post later this week, which further explores the concept of User-Centered Design and points to ways in which the academic eBook market could adapt its foundations to accommodate a more modern and progressive approach to producing eBooks.
We also have some other posts on eBooks you might be interested in:
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