Electronic Book Readers Research Articles

Electronic resources literacy and e-reading behaviour among nursing students

Purpose The study aims to determine the level of e-reading habits and preferred electronic reading materials among nursing college students. The study examines students’ problems and difficulties using electronic resources and their knowledge of electronic literacy. Over the recent years, worldwide interest in reading electronic books has skyrocketed. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a survey research design and a structured closed-ended questionnaire as the data collection instrument. The sample population consists of college students. The study uses a quantitative method to investigate this population’s e-reading habits and preferred electronic reading materials. Findings The study findings indicate that while students prefer electronic resources, they need help accessing them due to various factors such as cost and availability. The survey results show that libraries must subscribe to a broader range of electronic resources, and academics and publishers must promote open-access articles to address these limitations. Originality/value The study addresses a current issue of students’ reading habits and preferred electronic reading materials and examines the limitations they face in accessing these resources. This research concludes that 21st-century students have transitioned from traditional to digital reading habits. They have a preference for electronic resources but their access to these resources is limited.

The Reader and Reading Culture from the Perspective of Student Teachers

This study aimed at discovering the characteristics of non/traditional readers that can be used to formulate a typology and identify students’ attitudes towards reading for pleasure. It also deals with the social context influencing students’ reading culture. The questionnaire survey was conducted on 381 students at the Faculty of Education, University of Ostrava. The results showed that students who read for more than one hour a day prefer to read books in paper form, including textbooks, over reading electronic books, multimedia texts or playing on computers and consider themselves traditional readers. Non-traditional readers use critical thinking methods to understand texts and prefer a multimedia format for texts when reading for pleasure over playing computer games, reading e-books, and reading paper-based books. The study also points to the growing importance of the evolving multimedia reading culture in the era of the 4.0 Industrial Revolution.

A Method to Improve the Lifetime of Microcapsule Electrophoretic Display Modules

Microcapsule electrophoretic display (MED) is a kind of display with the properties of reflectivity and low power consumption. It is widely used in electronic book readers, but some new applications have appeared in the Internet of Things (IoT) products. Long working time is required in IoT products because it is not easy to replace or install such displays. The main failure phenomenon is the mura that will appear after about 1 to 2 years of use. The root cause of the failure is analyzed, and the lifetime prediction models for MED are introduced. The high temperature and high humidity (HTHH) test is used to evaluate the protective effect of the packaging structure. The HTHH test result is reported for the new MED structure; it shows that the MED with the new structure involves a longer working time.

Ikalbar App: Build a Society Reading Culture of West Kalimantan During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Background of the study: West Kalimantan was in 31st position with a score of 28.36 for the Provincial Reading Literacy Activity (Alibaca) index. It’s means that peaople’s reading interest is low.
 Purpose: To improve the reading culture in West Kalimantan, there were digital library application called iKalbar.
 Method: The data were was primary data sources taken from 1,224 respondents as the population and 93 respondents as the sample. It used a quota sampling technique. The data collection technique used descriptive analysis with SPSS 25.
 Findings: The result on the accessibility dimension showed that te majority of respondents scored iKalbar as the comfortable and easy application for searching the books that they needed when their mobility was limited during the lockdown period. Meanwhile, on the reusability dimension, the majority of respondents scored it as the efficient and effective application, especially during the pandemic to look for the resources needed. It can be seen from the three dimensions of assessment of the reading culture of the people of West Kalimantan that the majority of respondents considered iKalbar application providing user friendly, especially in the features which was compatible for all the devices. Furthermore, the additional duration and number of books to be borrowed provided by the application resulted the improvement in accessing and reading electronic books in iKalbar application.
 Conclusions: As people’s access to iKalbar increases, people will get used to the habit of accessing and reading electronic books. The habit that was started due to the momentum of the pandemic has encourage the growth of a reading culture among the community, although it has not shown a significant reading culture among the people of West Kalimantan.

Use of Critical Annotation and Interactive Fiction for the Creation of Digital Educational Content

Interactive fiction and critical annotation are two very important activities in the field of philology teaching. The first activity aims to turn the reader into an ac-tive element in reading electronic books. For this, different gadgets and tech-niques are used that force the reader to have to make decisions in the reading process. With respect of the annotation, it is an activity that aims to enrich liter-ary texts with meta-information that allows explaining or extending the infor-mation that appears in the contents of a book. Both activities are fundamental in the training of philology students. In general, there are few specific electronic publishing tools for these activities, and those that exist have a professional ori-entation. In this article, two tools are described that have implemented the func-tionality necessary to carry out these activities but with an academic orientation. In this way, students can learn both activities in a friendly, intuitive environ-ment designed for education.

Development of an electronic book accessibility standard for physically challenged individuals and deduction of a production guideline

Unlike popular web-based internet and mobile applications, electronic books and similar products have lower distribution and less accessibility, making them difficult for vulnerable social groups to utilize. Various institutions have proposed electronic publication (EPUB) accessibility guidelines, based on the IDEF modeling language, to provide accessible content for electronic publications. However, these are merely guidelines for securing accessibility of common electronic books. They are not geared toward the visually impaired persons. Moreover, even if accessibility standards exist, it becomes even more difficult to then find examination tools that can fully verify standards compliance. This study establishes an electronic book accessibility standard for the physically challenged individuals, based on the EPUB 3.0 accessibility guideline. We developed an automatic/semi-automatic examination tool that can test the standard. We linked the SIGIL electronic book reader, having the highest market share in Korea, to an examination tool to verify error detection performance. Lastly, an accessibility test was performed on 50 electronic books, commercially used in the Korean electronic book market, to assess which accessibility standard domain is the most problematic. Thus, we propose a guideline on matters that should be considered when writing electronic books in Korea.

Interview with Andy van Dam

Andries van Dam, is the Thomas J. Watson Jr. University Professor of Technology and Education and Professor of Computer Science at Brown University. He has been a member of Brown's faculty since 1965, was a co-founder of Brown's Computer Science Department and its first Chairman from 1979 to 1985, and was also Brown's first Vice President for Research from 2002--2006. His research includes work on computer graphics, hypermedia systems, post-WIMP and natural user interfaces (NUI), including pen- and touch-computing, and educational software. He has been involved for five decades with systems for creating and reading electronic books with interactive illustrations for use in teaching and research. In 1967 Prof. van Dam co-founded ACM SICGRAPH (the precursor of SIGGRAPH) and from 1985 through 1987 was Chairman of the Computing Research Association. He is a Fellow of ACM, IEEE, and AAAS, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He has received the ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award, the SIGGRAPH Steven A. Coons Award for Outstanding Creative Contributions to Computer Graphics, and the IEEE Centennial Medal, and holds honorary doctorates from Darmstadt Technical University, Swarthmore College, the University of Waterloo, and ETH Zurich. He has authored or co-authored over 100 papers and nine books, including "Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics" and three editions of "Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice".

電子書籍における“違和感”原因の解明 -小説の理解度と読了時間に関する通常書籍との比較-

電子書籍における“違和感”原因の解明 -小説の理解度と読了時間に関する通常書籍との比較-

Parent-Toddler Behavior and Language Differ When Reading Electronic and Print Picture Books.

Little is known about the language and behaviors that typically occur when adults read electronic books with infants and toddlers, and which are supportive of learning. In this study, we report differences in parent and child behavior and language when reading print versus electronic versions of the same books, and investigate links between behavior and vocabulary learning. Parents of 102 toddlers aged 17–26 months were randomly assigned to read two commercially available electronic books or two print format books with identical content with their toddler. After reading, children were asked to identify an animal labeled in one of the books in both two-dimensional (pictures) and three-dimensional (replica objects) formats. Toddlers who were read the electronic books paid more attention, made themselves more available for reading, displayed more positive affect, participated in more page turns, and produced more content-related comments during reading than those who were read the print versions of the books. Toddlers also correctly identified a novel animal labeled in the book more often when they had read the electronic than the traditional print books. Availability for reading and attention to the book acted as mediators in predicting children’s animal choice at test, suggesting that electronic books supported children’s learning by way of increasing their engagement and attention. In contrast to prior studies conducted with older children, there was no difference between conditions in behavioral or off-topic talk for either parents or children. More research is needed to determine the potential hazards and benefits of new media formats for very young children.

THE EFFECT OF USEFULNESS, EASE OF USE, AND ENJOYMENT TOWARDS ATTITUDE AND INTENTION TO USE E-READER: STUDY ON JAKARTA STATE UNIVERSITY’S STUDENTS


 The purpose of this research is to understand the effect of usefulness, ease of use, and enjoyment towards attitude and intention to use electronic book reader (e-reader). The conceptual model refers to Technology Acceptance Model theory. The research uses single cross-sectional descriptive research design to test the relationship among variables. Data is gathered with self-administered questionnaire survey method with Jakarta State University;s students as respondents. Hypotheses are tested with Structural Equation Model (SEM). The result shows that attitude still holds important role in forming intention, enjoyment comes as the strongest determinant for attitude and intention which emphasizes the hedonic value of e-reader, usefulness indirectly affects intention through attitude, and ease of use only affects usefulness and enjoyment but not attitude.
 
 Keywords: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, attitude, intention.
 

携帯読書端末の文字サイズと読みやすさ・わかりやすさの関係 : 拡大縮小機能の利用頻度に着目した検討

携帯読書端末の文字サイズと読みやすさ・わかりやすさの関係 : 拡大縮小機能の利用頻度に着目した検討

A novel technique for automatic retrieval of embedded text from books

The current paper propounds a method for extracting text from images of book covers and embedded text. The automation of this process greatly reduces the human interference while converting books (specifically their covers where this task becomes extremely difficult) to readable and editable electronic format specifically for electronic book readers. To achieve this purpose we propose a technique which works on scanned images of documents. The image is first clustered to reduce the number of color variances, a suitable plane is identified and then text region is segmented using connected component based method. The text thus obtained is then enhanced to ameliorate the results.

Socioeconomic Indicators Associated with First-year College Students' Use of Academic Libraries

The purpose of this study was to examine whether a wide variety of socioeconomic indicators were associated with first-year college students' use of academic libraries in six areas: checking out books from general circulation, reading electronic books, using online reference librarian services or speaking with a peer research consultant, logging into an electronic journal, using library workstations, or logging into a database. Data were drawn from 5133 first-year students attending a large, public research-extensive university in the upper Midwest of the United States. The results suggest that first-year students from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds are less likely to utilize libraries in nearly all areas. Some mixed findings also emerged suggesting that socioeconomic indicators such as hours spent in employment each week, living situation, and family are not uniformly predictive of students' use of academic libraries.

Ensuring Higher Security for Gathering and Economically Distributing the Data in Social Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks(WSNs) is spatially distributed in sensor nodes without relay. A Mobile Data Investor, M-Investor is used to gather the data from sensor node and upload the data into data sink. When one M-Investor is moving, gathers the data from each and every nodes of entire network and upload the data into data sink. Also it raises distance/time constraints. The proposed system uses multiple M-Investors that are formed by portioning a network into a number of small sub networks. Each of them gathers the data by dynamically moving through a number of smallest sub tours in the entire network, upload the data into a data sink and it reduces distance/time constraints. The proposed system introduces supportive caching policies for minimizing electronic Data provisioning cost in Social Wireless Sensor Networks (SWSNET). SWSNETs are formed by mobile data investor, such as data enabled phones, electronic book readers etc., sharing common interests in electronic content, and physically gathering together in public places. Electronic object caching in such SWSNETs are shown to be able to reduce the Data provisioning cost which depends heavily on the service and pricing dependences among various stakeholders including Data providers (DP), network service providers, and End Customers (EC).

A Study of the Differences in Awareness and Behaviors between Electronic and Print Book Readers

A Study of the Differences in Awareness and Behaviors between Electronic and Print Book Readers

읽기매체의 종류에 따른 유아의 이야기 이해도 차이 : 종이책과 전자책

ABSTRACT This study investigated differences in children’s story comprehension as they related to the types of reading media. The participants comprised 62 four-years-olds from two child-care centers located in a middle-income region of Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. In order to control the experience effect, newly developed stories published into two formats of reading media (paperback books and electronic books) were provided to the participants. The results indicated that there were no significant differences in children’s story comprehension depending on the types of reading media. Paperback book readers and electronic book readers did not show any significant difference in story comprehension, which consists of recall, recognition and reasoning tasks. As literature pertaining to children’s usage of electronic books is limited, the present study offers guidelines for the development of children’s reading media and may serve as a useful resource for future studies. Keywords：읽기매체(reading media), 종이책(paperback book), 전자책(electronic book, e-book), 이야기 이해(story comprehension).

Crossing media boundaries

It is necessary to continuously review the definition of the book moving from one bound by its material form to one determined by its function as a means of communication. The book’s social function as the high status vehicle for communicating new ideas and cultural expressions is being challenged by sophisticated systems of conveying meaning in other media. In this article, we report on two projects: electronic book (e-book) publication and reader forum for Nature Mage and the transmedia augmented reality (AR) fiction Sherwood Rise, which investigate these issues. Claudio Pires Franco’s work is based on the adaptation of a source work: Duncan Pile’s Nature Mage. The project aims to develop the book from e-book to a fan-produced enhanced digital book. Through this practice-based research, Franco investigates the definitions and classification of the e and i forms of the book and adaptation in new media; the role of the author in creative collaboration with readers through online forums; the extension of the story world through creative collaboration and reader participation while respecting and safeguarding creative properties. One remove from the traditional book, David Miller’s Sherwood Rise, research the user experience with AR to examine narrative problems and explore new storytelling aesthetics. These new media forms define the outer borders of the book system within which content is formed and moulded, and around which society is shaped.

E-Readers and Visual Fatigue

The mass digitization of books is changing the way information is created, disseminated and displayed. Electronic book readers (e-readers) generally refer to two main display technologies: the electronic ink (E-ink) and the liquid crystal display (LCD). Both technologies have advantages and disadvantages, but the question whether one or the other triggers less visual fatigue is still open. The aim of the present research was to study the effects of the display technology on visual fatigue. To this end, participants performed a longitudinal study in which two last generation e-readers (LCD, E-ink) and paper book were tested in three different prolonged reading sessions separated by - on average - ten days. Results from both objective (Blinks per second) and subjective (Visual Fatigue Scale) measures suggested that reading on the LCD (Kindle Fire HD) triggers higher visual fatigue with respect to both the E-ink (Kindle Paperwhite) and the paper book. The absence of differences between E-ink and paper suggests that, concerning visual fatigue, the E-ink is indeed very similar to the paper.

An index-based management scheme with adaptive caching for huge-scale low-cost embedded flash storages

Due to its remarkable access performance, shock resistance, and costs, NAND flash memory is now widely adopted in a variety of computing environments, especially in mobile devices such as smart phones, media players and electronic book readers. For the consideration of costs, low-cost embedded flash storages such as flash memory cards are often employed on such devices. Different from solid-state disks, the RAM buffer equipped on low-cost embedded flash storages are very small, for example, limited under several dozens of kilobytes, despite of the rapidly growing capacity of the storages. The significance of effectively utilizing the very limited on-device RAM buffers of embedded flash storages is therefore highlighted, and a novel design of scalable flash management schemes is needed to tackle the new access constraints of MLC NAND flash memory. In this work, a highly scalable design of the flash translation layer is presented with the considerations of the on-device RAM size, user access patterns, address-mapping-information caching and MLC access constraints. Through a series of experiments, it is verified that, with appropriate settings of cache sizes, the proposed management scheme provides comparable performance results to prior arts with much lower requirements on the on-device RAM. In other words, the proposed scheme suggests a strategy to make better use of the on-device RAM, and is suitable for embedded flash storages.

Optical characterization of display screens by speckle patterns

In recent years, flat-panel display (FPD) technology has undergone great development, and now FPDs appear in many devices. A significant element in FPD manufacturing is the display front surface. Manufacturers sell FPDs with different types of front surfaces, which can be matte (also called anti-glare) or glossy screens. Users who prefer glossy screens consider these displays to show more vivid colors compared with matte-screen displays. However, on the glossy screens, external light sources may cause unpleasant reflections that can be reduced by a matte treatment in the front surface. In this work, we present a method to characterize FPD screens using laser-speckle patterns. We characterize three FPDs: a Samsung XL2370 LCD monitor of 23 in. with matte screen, a Toshiba Satellite A100 LCD laptop of 15.4 in. with glossy screen, and a Grammata Papyre 6.1 electronic book reader of 6 in. with ePaper screen (E-ink technology). The results show great differences in speckle-contrast values for the three screens characterized and, therefore, this work shows the feasibility of this method for characterizing and comparing FPDs that have different types of front surfaces.