Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/58915
Technology A Growing Market for E-Books New technologies, from the Internet to iPods, have captured the imagina- tions of techno-wizards and techno- phobes alike. But electronic books, or e-books, have not had the same impact. Because technology has yet to produce a computer screen that is as comfortable to read as the printed page, users just haven't embraced e-books with the same enthusiasm as they have other innovations. That trend may be turning as the public becomes more accustomed to reading text onscreen and as more online texts become available. Practi- tioners in quickly evolving fields like business, science, and engineering especially appreciate the e-book for- mat because it is much more easily updated than print. Efforts such as Project Guten- berg, which aims to convert books and journals in the public domain into digital format, now offers near- ly 17,000 free books in its catalog at www.gutenberg.com. In 2004, search engine giant Google announced its intentions to digi- tally scan the 10 mil- lion book titles in the collections of five major research librar- ies, including those at Oxford University, Stanford University, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and the New York Pub- lic Library. The evolution of e- DATABIT books themselves has also helped their cause. The latest generation of e-books includes a wide range of features, many of which a traditional textbook cannot match. Companies are enhancing electronically printed materials with highlighting and notetaking capabilities, Web links, video, and electronic talking Flash presentations that allow the students to hear the words as they read them to increase their onscreen compre- hension. Boston-based Texthelp Sys- tems, for example, offers Lexiflow, a software program that offers these features as well as keyword searches, zoom control, and quick page navigation. Traditional publishers like According to the Associated Press, African Internet users pay 90 percent more for Internet access than Americans do. African citizens pay about $1,800 for 20 gigabytes of data per month, while Americans pay only $20 for the same capacity. An obstacle to Africa's economic development, this discrepancy stems, in part, from the continent's lack of communications infrastructure, say government officials. an associate professor of English at Purdue Uni- versity in West Lafay- ette, Indiana, believes e-books ultimately will become a major force in the publishing industry. Their affordability and ease of distribution will win out, especially when technology produces a device that makes onscreen reading more viable, he believes. "E-books are becoming popular not only because of their affordability, but also because they are a great resource," he says. Blakesley admits that many people, including his own students, still prefer holding a traditional book in their hands when it comes to reading for pleasure. But as far as informational reading is concerned, the e-book is starting to win out. "E-books are here to stay," says Blakesley. New RFID Tech at IU McGraw-Hill also have entered the e-book market to offer digital text- books to students. In partnership with digital publishing company Zinio, which also digitally publishes a number of magazines, McGraw- Hill Higher Education has made available 150 of its college textbooks in e-book format at half the cost of their printed counterparts. Although the public's love affair Coming soon to a library near you? 48 BizEd JULY/AUGUST 2006 with e-books may be slow to devel- op, educators like David Blakesley, A new piece of equipment at Indiana University's Kelley School of Busi- ness is more than just a printer—it prints radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, which will allow Kelley undergraduate and graduate students to model the complete life cycle of an item embedded with RFID tech- nology. The printer is a gift from Zebra Technologies, a company based in Vernon Hills, Illinois, that manufactures universal product code (UPC) and RFID printers. The printer adds a new capabil- ity to the Kelley School's RFID lab, which was established two years ago as the first working RFID education- PICTUREPRESS/GETTY IMAGES