Why Read Digitally?

"When I look at books, I see an outdated technology” (Abel 2009). This was the response from the headmaster of Cushing Academy (Ashburnham, Massachusetts) when asked why the school was deaccessioning their entire 20,000-volume collection to be replaced by a high-tech learning center. This is on the extreme end of the gradual shift to electronic reading and comes with a price tag of $500,000, but the shift to digital content is gradually growing elsewhere. Sixty-six percent of public libraries now offer access to ebooks either in the library or via their Web sites (ALA 2010) and some school libraries are beginning to circulate Kindles and add ebooks to their collections (Hamilton 2010).

To ebook or not?

Despite all of this, how many librarians actually read ebooks? We are surrounded by print materials, and it is often easier to pick a book of the shelf than to download one. I began my personal excursion into digital reading earlier this year, and I have been surprised to find what a different, yet not unpleasant, experience it is.

If you’re currently saying, “But I don’t have a Kindle/Nook/etc.!” it doesn’t mean you have no way to read an ebook. Adobe Digital Editions, which cooperates with the Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems of most ebook sellers with the notable exception of Amazon.com. Digital Editions, is a free download that will open an ebook on a PC or Mac. Bluefire Reader will adapt books from Adobes format for access on mobile Apple devices.

The primary difference between reading on your computer or an eReader is formatting. The great thing about using Adobe Digital Editions is that it retains the original formatting of the physical book, including typeface, font size, page numbers, and color. Adobe Digital Editions is also a wonderful solution while ebook formats are still lacking standardization—it is one of the only platforms that will accept almost every ebook. Reading on a computer is still the most popular way to read ebooks, with 35% of people who read digitally reporting that they do so on their laptop (Abell 2010).

There are some distinct differences, however, between reading on a computer and an eReading device. With most eReaders, the user chooses the typeface, font size, line spacing, and number of words per line, thus making every book look the same. The Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Borders Kobo also have applications that are available for free download for PC, Mac, and iPad as well as iPhone, Blackberry, and Android phones. This application emulates what a book would look like on the screen of an eReader, and will give you an idea of what a book looks like on an eReader without needing to invest in the device itself. Reading on an eReading device does have some benefits over a computer: it’s the size and shape of a physical book, approximately the weight of a paperback, and extremely portable. The e-ink display is also more comfortable to look at for long periods of time than a backlit computer screen.

Cost?

I know, now you’re saying, “Why should I buy a book when I can borrow one from my library?” Again, don’t fret! There are many options for free ebooks, but the ones to focus on are as follows:

• Amazon.com: free digital copies of public domain books and free first chapters for everything else. Everything has to be read on a Kindle or Kindle application.
• Overdrive: accessible through most public library Web sites with a library card. Books can be checked out for three weeks at a time and can be read on anything except a Kindle.
• NetGalley.com: librarians, among others, can create a free account to browse and download free eGalleys. These can be read with Adobe Digital Editions or transferred to most handheld eReaders.

Among these, I highly recommend NetGalley ( http://www.netgalley.com ). NetGalley’s selection includes books for children, teens, and adults with publishers such as Capstone, Lerner, and Hough-ton Mifflin Harcourt; more are added regularly. Not only is this an opportunity to explore the world of ebooks, it’s also a valuable collection development tool.

Digital reading—So what?

Are you saying, “I don’t get why digital reading is important?” First and foremost, it should be important to us because our students are interested in it. Fifty-seven percent of students say they are “interested in reading an ebook” and one third say they would “read more books for fun if they had access to ebooks on an electronic device;” twenty-two percent of families surveyed said that they either already own, or plan to own within one year, an eReading device, and that number will continue to grow each year (Hebert 2010).

It is also important that we, as librarians and educators, have experience in this area before our students are asked to explore it on their own. It is a different type of reading, and it’s important that we be available to share our own insights, experience, and advice for how to adapt to reading ebooks. In order to do this, we need to pay close attention to the ways in which reading digitally affects our reading habits. Are we more likely to skim and skip passages, as I discovered I was doing, or do we actually read slower than we do in print, as a recent usability study demonstrates (Nielsen 2010)? Do we have the same level of comprehension? Compare the experience of reading on a computer to reading on a Kindle or similar device and think about the possibility for distraction. We need to know where we run into problems with our own digital reading in order to advise students.

In summary

Cushing Academy’s bookless library is far more extreme than what most school libraries may ever see. We don’t need to start making plans to replace book collections, but we do need to decide how digital reading can supplement our physical collections. In order to do this, we must first understand how digital reading differs from print, so we need to start exploring. Compare different devices, formats, and sources—decide what you like and what you don’t and think about how your students will react. Although digital reading may not come naturally to librarians, it is important to introduce it into our routines so that, when the time comes, we know where it fits into our collections, curriculum, and student needs.