A New Zealand blog on current and future trends in public libraries and how they are being impacted by the internet and technology. By
SueThe quality of the reading experience of e-books is addressed in a post by Kassia Krozser . She's read a lot of ebooks and has identified the things that annoy her most:
Most of the issues relate to basic production and workflow i.e. how the e-book will be 'consumed' - she means how they are 'read' of course. Before anyone asks for enhancements, she asks for 'graceful degradation' - how the book displays as it moves from complex to simpler formats:
1. Consider the medium: it's digital not print. Get rid of page numbers and endless quotes & references about other books, new and upcoming, old and familiar. Or organise them better elsewhere.
2. Better image and textflow: Images and captions often appear totally disassociated from the text or one another.
3. Cover art needs to be included and be a quality image.
4. Quality checks - does the file open at the proper place? Does "Start" actually open on the very first page? Does it include the introduction? Are the graphic elements used to indicate a new chapter included properly? Do fonts change without warning? Are words actually missing? is the hyphenation right? are letter shapes rendered properly?
5. Bring the book up-to-date eg for a classic text, make sure the publisher's url is up to date, along with the author's title list.
6. Improve navigation & usability: check the contents pages are easily navigable and not 20 pages/screens of large font to scroll through and ensure the index has links to the right text.
E-Books are software and need to be tested with users i.e. readers in mind. Design is as important to the e-book as it is to the printed book. It's not what she calls "a scan and dump" process.
