Now we are using both print and e-books as references in higher education. Around 77 percent of college students said they preferred print to e-books in a survey conducted in 2012 by the National Association of College Stores. A lot of people still like having a physical book in front of them. On the other side, you can get digital textbooks from open-source sites and at the same time, students may share files rather than buy their own.
I think booth E-books and physical books will be with us for at least the next 100 years, E-books will be more dominant in the nearest future without canceling the traditional books, as E-books have several advantages over traditional books such as:
1- animation/videos is presented easily in E-books while very difficult an d needs many sequence images otherwise.
2- the size and weight of e-book is zero compared to trad.
3- mobility,
4- speed of getting the book, buying a physical book need the book to travel from city to city and perhaps from country to another taking days to reach yo, while downloading it takes seconds.
5- E-books are customized, you can change the font size, no need for reading glasses, the background, the light, landscape.. etc.
6- reading by night without the need for light.
7- text to speech applications, the book auto narration and machine translation or at least vocabulary dictionary, this allow a person to read a book from almost any language.
8- good for trees, no papers or inks needed.
9- fast reproduction/ publishing
10- a public or university library can serve unlimited number of people at the same time, without worrying about how many copy of the same book they have.
At the same time physical books have some advantages over e-books such as:
1- reading joy, some people enjoy reading and flipping pages of a physical book. but this advantage will be demolished after some generations of people who might enjoy reading E-book more.
2- no need for a device to operate a physical book.
3- no need for batteries or energy
Tthe following diagram asked the question related to the future of e-book.
I think the future will be for e-book.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/blog/en/blog/2013/03/25/print-books-vs-e-books-whats-the-future-of-reading/
I think booth E-books and physical books will be with us for at least the next 100 years, E-books will be more dominant in the nearest future without canceling the traditional books, as E-books have several advantages over traditional books such as:
1- animation/videos is presented easily in E-books while very difficult an d needs many sequence images otherwise.
2- the size and weight of e-book is zero compared to trad.
3- mobility,
4- speed of getting the book, buying a physical book need the book to travel from city to city and perhaps from country to another taking days to reach yo, while downloading it takes seconds.
5- E-books are customized, you can change the font size, no need for reading glasses, the background, the light, landscape.. etc.
6- reading by night without the need for light.
7- text to speech applications, the book auto narration and machine translation or at least vocabulary dictionary, this allow a person to read a book from almost any language.
8- good for trees, no papers or inks needed.
9- fast reproduction/ publishing
10- a public or university library can serve unlimited number of people at the same time, without worrying about how many copy of the same book they have.
At the same time physical books have some advantages over e-books such as:
1- reading joy, some people enjoy reading and flipping pages of a physical book. but this advantage will be demolished after some generations of people who might enjoy reading E-book more.
2- no need for a device to operate a physical book.
3- no need for batteries or energy
@Mahfuz, Steven Schwartz have explained why e-books are format of future Higher education. Good essay!
http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2012/mar/15/ebooks-academic-future-universities-steven-schwartz
Now it is the world of internet and smartphones and tablets where people don't want to carry much of study material with himself. e-books are the best choice for them. Also due to availability of some of these books as open source, people can easily get access it into his PC, Laptops, Tablets and even in their smartphones.
So, e-books are economical and best option for students and researchers who need it.
Regards,
Nitish
Our collegous Ahmad Hassanat has already mentioned the detail benefit comparisson. I do agree with his opinion. Somehow, we still need to have a physical things as well as book.
@Ahmad,
thanks for your interesting listing. I confess, I´m one of these old- fashioned humans, who like to keep a book in the hands, flipping on a chair, bed or sofa. One of my most positive features is: I can take a pencil and make my notices, which are especially amazing, if reading them again twenty years later. Thats the reason why I have a large own scientific and aestethic library.
By the way: I believe that our professional future are the e-books.
The generation now in schools will go for e-books during their college studies, 100%. Since, we have seen the the technology coming up we are not able to make our self very comfortable with it, that is why, perhaps we want a hard copy - a printed book- preferably. If you are tech savvy, love and welcome change then you would prefer to have an e-Book than a printed book, this is what I have seen during last 35 years of professional career
The problem of preferring printed books over e-books is the touch effect. Our nerves gives a different feeling when we use printed material. When we look the display for reading e-books some kind of problem happens to most of us because of the Resolution, Font Size, Brightness and contrast. Believe me those who are using Macbook Pro or Samsung Ativ Book, love to read e-books because of its display.
Great discussion. E-books are predominant now. Gathering and use of e-books is quick, easy, mobile, and comfortable. But we don't know exactly which technology will be predominant in 10-20 years. If faster and cheaper = better?
In my opinion e-books are very good books that any body could own it instead an expensive printed book.
as mentioned by many, there are lots of advantages in e-books than printed books for readers. then I have a question about the authors? can authors earn by publishing e-books?
My answer is a clear YES/NO. I´m author of a series of textbooks. They are sold in printed form, but you can achieve them as single chapters or as whole book in e-book form also. The problem is, that e-books are often stolen and distributed, so the author/s don´t see any fee.
I´ve often discovered my complete stolen books in pdf format.
Never having earned much from my 17 scholarly books, I enjoy seeing my ideas in worldwide circulation. Whether e-books or printed books serve as the media, let´s not lose sight of their being merely the means, not the ends, of the ideas that they diffuse. So it really doesn´t matter that e-books replace printed books or that printed books survive. What does matter is that the reading public preserve its desire for education. If e-books aid the preservation process, I favor them.
I prefer a physical book to an e-book - but there are three issues with physical books. The first is cost (Firstly paying for the book - and for some students, especially in the underdeveloped countries, the cost of a book is beyond their means. Secondly the cost to the environment - trees felled for woodchips for paper); the second is the time it takes to produce and print the book - by the time the book is printed much newer research is/might be available on-line; and the third issue is getting the book to the reader (and some students/researchers find themselves in strange and lonely places!) There will always be a place for hard-copy I believe (when the electronic medium breaks down having it stored electronically does not help at all) - but I also believe that ease of distribution, low cost of production, and speed of getting the latest work out there will be based on the electronic media. I am trying to keep as much research on file electronically, but the stuff that I really find interesting I still print out so that I can read it anywhere I please. E-books are the way of the future - and I can foresee interactive e-books becoming a useful tool in teaching. I learnt more from research articles at university than I did from hard-copy textbooks.
My students still prefer to use printed books in comparison to e-books. Having said that there are some students who have already adopted and adopting the e-books. The main advantages seen are availability all the times as long as you are connected, low cost, less bulk and weight, getting it instantaneously from the publisher or seller, etc. It is also offering us the advantage of customizing the book for the course. The main disadvantage is that you may not be able to sell as used book. It is also possible to incorporate interactive features as part of student learning. I think they will coexist with printed books.
Jayasinghe: Getting paid for e-books is a complicated issue. It depends upon the contract you have with your publisher. It also depends upon the ability to customize a book by taking chapters from different books. I am not sure what is the procedure adopted by the publishers. Recently a couple of my books are available as e-books. But as of now I see no mention of e-books in my royalty statements.
No doubt e-books are Popular nowadays particularly when the book can Read itself the chosen Passages or Topics. But the problem is that it is difficult to go back and forth to refer to some Figures or Tables or Equations or to re-read a particular portion for Greater Insight.This difficulty will be experienced in the case of Technical Books. In such cases Printed books are Preferable. Probably that is why a good number of Students Prefer Printed Books.No doubt e-books are good for Archives and Perennial storage with easy Access.and for going Green
P.S.
Pisupati Subramanyam:
In fact the advantage of e-books is the ability for book marking and searching. It of course depends upon the type of reader that you are using. If you think that simply as a PDF file then what you say is true. But with other readers you have such a great advantage for book marking, it is very easy to go back and forth with them. You need to get used to the process. Also many of them are not easily copied or transferred.
With such a Facility, e-books may be Really Good. But one should have a taste and flare for it.. If it becomes inevitable,one will definitely go for it.
P.S.
Dear all,
Don´t want to be boring,
but did you ever keep a smelling dusty book from 1907 named Rutherford "Radiactive Umwandlungen", or the original edition of Libby´s "Radiocarbon Dating" 1951 or a version of a textbook from 1987 with signature of Boag, the famous teacher for ionisation chambers in your hands?
May be that these books are not better for learning and understanding science than e-books, but they are pure and maximal emotion and feeling.
Hanno
Yes, at least for some of us who are nostalgic about the past, printed books will always remain. In spite of adopting e-books, I still continue buying printed books.
I can add one more advantage of E-books to Mr Hassanat's list. The texts, diagrams and pictures of E-books can easily be copied and used in a paper of a researcher (by saying the reference of course). But I myself prefer printed books. I agree with Sandeep and Hanno too.
The future is for e books due to many advantages but we can not dispense the physical one.
The future of ebooks is connected with the future of modern digital storing devices. Look at the cd's, after some years they do not play properly what you have written inside them. And of course we don't know what about magnetic servers after a century. So, probably the all time classic printed book has not died!
The growing electronic gadgets made e-books as simplistic way to carry anywhere. The e-book growth is solely on basis of this gadgets and internet growth. Still most peoples(including me) feel comfort in reading the physical books than e-books (preferred only if the hard book is not available) and I feel that, this is the case for most of readers staying in home or office(not a frequent traveler), whereas the e- format of each book is used as archive for references(if its academic texts).
Dear Mahfuz, I read both types e- books and traditional hard covers with balanced preferences.
E-books are the future. It is only our generation who is looking back with affection at printed books. The main disadvantage of E-books is the feeling of un-comfort when read on screens. The technology is heading forward to solve it. Consider for example the Google-Kindle which gives comfort of reading and ease of handling in somehow similar fashion to printed books. Similarly newspapers may be replaced by some sort of flexible-foldable display giving the same feelings. Beside that, books has to compete with the speed of information change on the net which favors E-books.
However, to answer the question, for the present, universities must keep stock of both printed and E-books. Thanks. @AlDmour.
Printed books are for keeps, no denying that! E books are more a matter of convenience, availability at a click without having to carry the burden and ready information
I-pad and Kindle readers are so advanced now that the quality of reading is not much different from the printed book because of the very high resolution. The number of e-books in our library is increasing which we can access from our desktop and read at convenience. The only question still is the problem of lending e-books, so there are some limitations. Our library lends the e-books through ebrary. If Google or Amazon version is purchased then they have to lend it with the device. So they are still studying the process.
@Hanno Krieger
My children will never allow me to set peacefully on sofa to read a book. i normally read outside, while traveling, anywhere outside my home, and this what makes me rely more on E-books.
who knows? in the future we may find a way to transfer knowledge from books to the brain in seconds, having this technology in hands might cancel physical books.
@Ahmad Hassanat, just a matter of your age. The children will grow and dissapeear from you daily life. Then I think you will enjoy sitting around and read very slowly to get the full impression of the text. I admit, the text must not neccesarily consist of mathematical formulars or statistics from economy studies.
But I repeat, new technologies are not bad if used for the correct purpose.
Regards
I still like to use physical books especially for the ones I use a lot. It just make me feel more into the book. e-books are great too to go over some material or for research purposes.
I always prefer books only..some exceptional cases like field visit e.t.c. If we buy a costly gadget its good..but unlike books we need be afraid of when it vil fall down or break..but compared to need not worry about unless and until if we drop it in harsh conditions..
It is good to have tech aid in the books, which is e book. The e book is very friendly for transportation and easy access. However, I am sure that it can never be a substitute for the physical format. It is always comfortable to read in the physical format, even in terms of recollecting.
The strain (physical and eye strain) are seem to be greater with e book usage.
If anything has to be searched in the physical format of the book, the readers are required to find out in the text book material to find the answer. However, provides the direct search mode to find the answer. The search mode may easen the efforts and time, but not allow us learn anything. Because while searching the "point/topic of interest" we land up in reading many other things, which increases our knowledge. But this is not possible with search mode feature of the e books.
I support e book, but i do not agree with discarding/eliminating the physical format of book.
I agree with Arvind. In the process of searching for something in the printed book, many a times we come across details that we might have overlooked. I always prefer printed book, but the march of technology probably will make it inevitable at some point of time in future.
@Lachezar,
I´m deeply convinced, that the physical books are not the reason to cut brasilian forests. Books are made for a long time, they are no quick consumable materials.
If you want to give a pro for e-books, please don´t forget the huge consum of rare earth metals to construct the electronic devices. And like it has been remarked earlier in this thread, you need very efficient and permanent storage devices if you want to use your e-books in some years.
One important additional argument for printed books is the often watched habit to print out the needed chapters you have to learn as hardcopies by your laser or color printer. Have you saved forests then?
So I prefer the printed book if possible.
@Hanno Krieger regarding your point "e-books are often stolen and distributed, so the author/s don´t see any fee. I´ve often discovered my complete stolen books in pdf format."
I am about to solve this problem, if some one cooperate with me, we will create the unstealable e-book.
Dear Ahmad,
interesting anouncement. I don´t not at all have the smallest idea how to manage it. For me, my publishing house has the responsibility to prevent stealing. But I´m interested in your ideas.
Regards
@AH
A very interesting idea. But my dear i have found yhat there are. More tham 100 ways to crack any kind of security. You just name a good book (eBook or hard copy/printed one) a pdf version is there already. When software can be cracked then this
book stand NO chance.
It is here and will be more interesting to see how it will evolve in the near future. Especially when we talk about environment and preserving trees.
In addition, it is with you wherever you go, easy access, no extra weight
Although I still like to use the physical book, but I think it will be less and less in the future
@Nabeeh,
thats what I agree, the e-book is coming, but the old fashioned people (you don´t look like) love the paper book so long as possible.
@Prof. Ravi Sharma is there a way to crack encryption with 256 bit key?
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