E-readers in Action - Page 2

Overall, the survey responses revealed that reading is an intensely individual experience: Each person had a different take on whether they enjoyed using the Sony Reader and whether they would use one again. Most respondents pointed out known issues with the devices: unsatisfactory battery life and difficulty recharging, slow refresh time when turning pages, glare on the page, and an expensive purchase price.

And while patrons enjoyed having a variety of titles to choose from, many of them did not read more than one, raising the question of whether the preloaded content model of lending makes sense: Why monopolize many books at once when the patron only wants one or two? To support this sentiment, some patrons requested an on-demand model of service. This may be feasible at a smaller institution where the staff member who loads content onto the Readers would also be serving patrons at the circulation desk. Unfortunately, the current hardware-dependent technology model is not scalable to a larger academic setting, particularly a library-supported one. At Penn State many people staff the lending desk, which is open 24 hours a day, five days a week, and loading content would require access to the two dedicated PCs and the many virtual machine profiles—a training nightmare. This was a major finding the researchers shared with Sony Electronics. A wireless download capability might make this situation slightly more bearable; however, the Kindle also requires an individual account to be created for every five devices and therefore does not lift any of the logistical burdens.

E-readers in the classroom

In both the English and library studies classes, students were issued Readers preloaded with the content for the class. In addition, students in the library studies class were given a small selection of popular leisure titles to peruse. The focus of this class was navigation, critique, and synthesis of information sources and tools/formats. Students were asked to reflect on their experiences with the Readers and other course topics via blog posts, and they also participated in regular user-experience surveys to give feedback on the Sony Reader devices specifically.

In addition to providing feedback that echoes that from the patrons who borrowed Sony Readers, the students answered questions that gave insight into when and how they used the devices, and what they thought would make them suitable for college students. Their responses reveal that although the Sony Reader is a single-function device, the majority of students did not refrain from multitasking while using it: Nearly 67% of them were engaged in other activities while reading. Additionally, although the Sony Reader is a mobile device, most of the students used it only in their dorm rooms; while they were not specifically asked why they chose a location, their complaints about inability to make in-text notes and easily navigate pages might point to the need to be close to their computers, notebooks, and other course materials while doing assigned readings on the devices. While none of the students completely agreed on what would make the device better suited to academe, many of them expressed a desire for greater interactivity with the text, as well as multimedia functionality and wireless capability.

The students in the honors English course engaged with an extensive reading list on their Sony Readers in a class that also required a great deal of reflective writing. In addition, the English classes were encouraged to do their own content loading, including experimentation with RSS feeds (a clunky process that requires help from free-download software called Calibre to convert the RSS feeds into Sony’s proprietary .lrf file format). Their feedback was gathered through a series of videotaped interviews and in end-of-semester presentations given to an audience of faculty from the libraries and English departments as well as a representative from Sony. These classes were offered again in spring 2009, the primary difference being that the instructors were graduate assistants who were also using the Sony Reader in their own studies.

Early video and presentation analysis reveals that the students read differently when using their Sony Readers instead of books or computer screens: They felt more immersed in the text (some of this may be attributed to the difficulty in navigating to bookmarks and salient passages, requiring more thorough reading and digestion of the text on the first reading). The students adapted to the navigational challenges of the Sony Readers, creating notecards and post-its to assist in information recall, but would like to avoid this in the future. Many of the students in the English classes were in majors outside of the humanities, and they felt strongly that current e-reader technology is not adaptable to the hard sciences, whose texts are rich with color and diagrams, and are not often read in sequence from cover to cover. Most of the students were hesitant to commit to purchasing an e-reader any time in the near future; they weren’t sure whether they’d use it outside of assignments, and the price is too high for a college student. They were also unsure how they felt about university-funded Readers because of their lack of application in the sciences; most were sure they’d end up having to purchase additional paper books as well, making the proposition even more expensive.

As primary content-providers on campus, libraries are positioned to make a difference in the way content is delivered and digested. Features such as color e-ink, interaction with the text, portability, and integration with other applications such as phone, music, and computing remain on the desired list of functions e-readers should have.