info NeoGnostic: Electronic paper and e-book readers

: Name: Chris Armstrong; Location: Aberystwyth, Wales, United Kingdom

I am the owner and managing director of Information Automation Limited (IAL), a company that specialises in research, consultancy and training for the information profession. We are particularly interested in all forms of electronic information resources (e-journals, e-books, etc) and I teach a course in electronic publishing at the Department of Information Studies in Aberystwyth. Drilling down still further(!), my interests centre on the quality and evaluation of electronic information, and in the thinking that underpins activities in library and information science.

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Monday, November 12, 2007

Electronic paper and e-book readers

Just a little bit slow in catching up with this ... but I was away last week at the Talis Insight Conference in Birmingham, of which, more later.

Have you ever wondered what makes the latest generation of e-book readers different from earlier versions? Well, apart from increased storage capacity that coul doffer up to 200 titles in a device the size of a paperback book... it's the e-paper / e-ink technology that offers readers book pages that come close - quite close, really - to a print-on-paper reading experience. And what does that mean? Well, iRex - makers of the iLiad - explain all in their blog: What makes our electronic paper displays different?

To understand the difference we first need to take a closer look at the different components of an EPD and for simplicity sake we will separate the following components...

EPD? That's electronic paper display to you and me! A useful read (in fact, the iRex blog is always worth watching) for anyone pondering on the possibilities of e-book readers.

As it happens, e-books have been in the news quite a bit over the last few days, and the latest article to be added to the IAL bibliography, Writings about e-book publishing, 2007, is one by Monica Landoni and colleague on e-books in public libraries.

>>Technorati tags: ebooks; readers; public libraries; eInk; e-paper