Assessing e-book readers for academic practices

Hendrik van der Sluis

Timothy Linsey

Academic Development Centre

Kingston University

ALT-C 2012

Available at: http://goo.gl/QRW2R

Research design & methods

ObjectiveEvaluating e-book readers as a display technology for academic digital text

Research approachExploratory study with qualitative research methods (Durrheim, 1999)

Theoretical framework Activity theory (Engeström, 1987; Wali et al., 2008)

Research methodsSemi structured interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009)Coding technique: ‘Bricolage’ + theoretical framework (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009)

TrialStaff borrowed e-book readers for 4-6 weeks for use in their own context.

RecruitmentVolunteers (n15) sign up after reading ADC newsletter

Why use an e-book reader?

“Because I have a lot of documents which I have to read for committees and other reasons, and other than printing them out, or using a laptop, both of which are quite bulky” “I could just take the Kindle with me, to read the papers and then I’d be prepared, rather than having to carry this bulky folder around with me”

Ease of use

E-ink“I guess physically the quality of the Sony is very good. It feels good to use and it looks good. The Kindle is… well its plastic in comparison. [...]. I mean its [Sony PRS-600] certainly better made, [..., having] the ability to use things like memory sticks on it which could be quite useful, but you lacked features like WIFI”

Ease of use“I have literally just used it for downloading the books and the magazines and reading [..., from] Amazon which was very straightforward. Because I have an Amazon, account it was very straightforward”

Responsiveness

“The reader was not great, it did not automatically fill the pages and it did not flip over the pages terribly well, you had to drag it each time rather than just having a one-click system that will take you to the next page”

PDF

“In other words, trying to manipulate and navigate that small screen with material [PDF] that was not necessarily designed for it was actually a barrier” “if it was a PDF, I would not be able to use it on the kindle, it would be too infuriating to me. I could not read across and up and down, you know, it would not be worth me doing that”

Note taking

“I liked the idea but operationalising it has not been as useful as I had originally hoped” “I would be a lot happier with it if it had a faster display and a more natural way of writing on it because there is that lag between starting input and response on the screen. There is a disjoint between what you are [doing and] seeing”

Transferring & organizing PDF Documents

“So dragging and dropping pdfs off of my PC straight into the drive of the reader. But, then they would lose their names and made it impossible to track what you’re actually reading”

Usage following the project

“Probably for leisure, I do not think I would recommend it for work because I do not think it does enough for work” “For fiction, yes. Based on my experience of academic reading, I would not recommend it to someone to do academic reading”