According to forecasts, printed books will gradually disappear from libraries
The libraries are full of them. It runs without a battery, you can read it even in the bright sun and if water splashes on it there is no risk of a short circuit. Nevertheless, the printed buck has had competition. In principle, the e-book is an optimization of the development that has been observed since the invention of written documents since the clay tablet: information density and portability continue to increase. Thanks to Gutenberg, books became a mass commodity around 1450 - e-books could soon make printing on paper unnecessary during book production.
“The trend is to replace printed books in libraries with electronic versions,” says the chairman of the German Library Association (dbv), Frank Simon-Ritz. The university libraries have already shown this clearly when it comes to magazines. “It simply makes much more sense to only offer scientific works electronically and therefore make them available at any time.” According to the German Book Trade Association, scientific and specialist books in particular were sold as e-books in 2011, accounting for a total of 37 percent. Only four percent of e-books sold were fiction. The library of the University of Weimar, of which Simon-Ritz is also director, currently contains 500,000 books, magazines and microfilms and 200,000 e-books. Electronic books already make up almost 30 percent of the available media. “It won’t be long before the numbers of e-books and printed books are the same,” says Simon-Ritz. German library statistics show: On average, German libraries spent 40 percent of their acquisition budget on electronic media last year, compared to five percent ten years ago.
The accessibility of printed books for libraries is clearly regulated by law in Germany. There is heated debate about whether this also applies to electronic formats. Some publishers even refuse to license e-books to libraries. “I think this is extremely sensitive because it calls into question the basic mission of libraries,” says Simon-Ritz. The major publishers in Germany do not want to comment, only say that they are still in negotiations with the libraries regarding future payment models and also how to prevent students from permanently storing the e-books on their devices. The current situation is that the university pays a one-off flat rate to the publisher or buys several licenses for an e-book in order to be able to “lent” it to several students at the same time. Libraries cannot license and lend e-books without the permission of the rights holder. Simon-Ritz calls on the federal and state governments to create clear regulations for fair licensing models and to update copyright law.
Klaus Junkes-Kirchen is responsible for the acquisition of new media at the library of the Goethe University in Frankfurt. “I understand if the publishers refuse that the library only buys the e-book once in the future - instead of several copies like with the printed book - and then all students can use it at the same time,” he says. It also makes sense for him to pay royalties per download, corresponding to the current copy fee. Anyone who currently makes a copy in the library pays royalties per piece to the collecting society (VG) Wort and VG Kunst und Bild, with which the libraries have concluded a contract. In this way, the legal claims of the authors are settled. The e-books can be given an expiry date, such as a password that is only valid temporarily. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is intended to prevent an entire e-book from being downloaded and printed at once. Rights holders can thus control the use of digital media.
If students no longer take printed books home with them, there will no longer be any fees for books returned late. The university libraries state that they partially finance new media with these funds. Five to six-figure amounts are collected every year in late fees at universities - and are also firmly budgeted for every year at most universities. “On the other hand, you cannot tear out or smear pages from an e-book, so such copies do not have to be replaced. This means that some costs are eliminated,” says Junkes-Kirchen.
Nevertheless, e-books cost more on average than printed books. Pricing is politically controversial. The German Book Trade Association and the German Library Association agree that the fixed book prices that apply to printed books must also apply to electronic books. Fixed book prices oblige publishers to set a fixed price for a book so that there is no price competition between booksellers as cultural mediators. This is also the case at the moment. However, the reduced VAT rate of seven percent applies to printed books; you pay 19 percent for e-books. Simon-Ritz says: VAT must also be reduced for electronic books, otherwise it will act like an additional tax on knowledge that shouldn't exist." An e-book is just a book that is available as a file, not software. “The adjusted VAT rate would relieve the burden on library budgets much more and more effectively than the late fees,” says Simon-Ritz.
According to Media Control, around 12.3 million e-books were downloaded for a fee in Germany in 2012. Sales were therefore two and a half times as high as in 2011. The sales share of e-books in the entire book market was 2 percent in 2012; for 2015, the German Book Trade Association predicts a market share of 6.3 percent. Publishers estimate that they will generate an average of 17 percent of their sales from e-books by 2015; they have already revised this percentage upward by one point since last year.
Because there are more and more e-book customers: According to the German Book Trade Association, 757,000 people bought 4.7 million e-books in 2011; In 2010 there were two million e-books to 540,000 customers. Accordingly, the demand for e-readers is also increasing: 2.2 million Germans already own one. Most e-book readers are smaller, lighter and have longer battery life than a tablet or laptop. Many customers still choose tablets because they can do more with them. However, this is exactly what leads to the e-book itself being forgotten. As the Institute for Marketing and Media at the University of Hamburg has discovered, users are distracted by these other options and suddenly find themselves on the Internet, in the headlines of the news app or in the middle of the latest strategy game. This is especially poisonous for students. For their study, the Hamburg researchers surveyed 1,015 e-book readers last year. Students don't necessarily need an e-book reader, says Simon-Ritz. “The libraries in the universities have good jobs, and there will be more and better ones in the near future. Scientific e-books can be read on the PC. But the e-book reader is practical for on the go.”
In fact, devices with e-ink displays have battery life of days to weeks. This display technology can be imagined like the number display on a digital clock. The virtual book page is not illuminated and only uses electricity when turning pages. Most e-book readers use SD cards as storage expansion. A few hundred books can fit on a reader even without a storage medium.
E-books are available in over 30 formats. A standard would require either a law or an agreement between publishers. It's not that far yet. The best known is probably the PDF file. However, complications can arise with the format and resolution of the PDF on e-readers. The Epub format has emerged as a quasi-standard: it was developed specifically for e-readers and adapts to the respective device. Nevertheless, every reader should support PDF, then the user can convert all documents into PDF on the computer and read them on the reader. HTML, DOC, TXT and PDB are also useful for students. However, most readers can play all formats, only Amazon has its own standard. The individual file formats do not have any particular advantages or disadvantages. The user couldn't choose their format anyway, because an e-book usually only appears in a single format. The technical requirement for reading and managing e-books in Epub format on the screen is the Adobe Digital Editions program. The program is available for free download from the website www.adobe.com
Anyone who chooses a reading device for e-books still has to decide what type of reader they are.
The mandatory reader:
If you use the e-reader to work, you should make sure that the device supports many file formats and that the display is large enough. Part of scientific work is that you have to compare different passages of text with each other, so it's worth having a larger display area to avoid constant zooming and scrolling. Anyone who only reads text will get along wonderfully with the 5 and 6 inch devices. Especially those who often deal with newspapers, technical drawings, diagrams, graphics or non-scalable PDFs during their studies will be well served with a 10-inch device. A note function is also important, with which you can make comments in the text. Ideally, these can also be exported.
Suitable: Onyx Boox M92, Onyx Boox M91S, PocketBook 902, PocketBook 903, Pocket-Book 912, Asus DR 900, eeeReader.
The bankrupt vulture:
E-book readers are available from 50 euros, but devices for 250 euros are also considered cheap. If you can't or don't want to spend more than 200 euros, you'll be well served with these copies: Bookeen Cybook Pous, Icarus Sense G2, Sony PRS 350 Pocket Edition.
The Note-Taker:
You can doodle in a book with a pencil, and some e-book readers also allow you to take notes on the screen, and some even allow freehand notes and simple drawings.
Suitable: The PocketBook 603, PocketBook 903, PocketBook 912, Icarus Sense G2, Onyx Boox M90, Onyx Boox M92, Sony PRS 650 Touch Edition.
The night owl:
Anyone who often reads in low light needs an illuminated reading surface. The Kindle Paperwhite and the Kobo Glo offer this. Of course, leaving the light on will deplete the battery more quickly. The e-ink displays do not light up themselves. There are also small clip-on lights for them that are universally suitable for almost all e-book readers.
The gardener:
If you prefer to read in the sun, you should pay attention to a non-reflective display. Almost all E-Ink devices come with the necessary matte display.
The procrastinator:
If you want to read quickly, you need the largest possible display so that you can see as much text as possible at a glance. The Amazon Kindle also turns pages very quickly. Basically, E-Ink displays require between 0.5 and 2 seconds to scroll. Especially those who choose larger fonts have to wait for the page to turn.
INTERVIEW with Frank Simon-Ritz:
Frank Simon-Ritz (51) is the chairman of the German Library Association (dbv). The historian and German studies graduate represents more than 2,000 libraries in Germany, including all 350 academic libraries in the country.
UNIGLOBALE: Mr. Simon-Ritz, what will the e-book do to university libraries?
FS-R.: The concept of libraries will change completely. In the future, its attractiveness will no longer be the fact that it has information on shelves, but rather its good technical equipment and the working atmosphere.
UNIGLOBALE: Do you assume that the e-book will one day completely replace the printed book?
FS-R.: No, not that. We still go to the cinema today, we still listen to the radio, even though there are Blu-rays and MP3 players today. E-books and audio books do not completely replace the book, they complement it and thus expand the range of media. Electronic is just a transformation. If it is not about the sober absorption of information, but rather a literary work in a beautifully bound cover, the printed book will also be further ahead. Artistic books that are not just about the content will always find buyers.
UNIGLOBALE: Will the libraries' reference holdings also be displaced?
FS-R.: Absolutely. Printed material will disappear from libraries, but new jobs will be created - rows of book shelves will be replaced by rows of workstations.
UNIGLOBALE: What do you think – how will the lending system work in the future?
FS-R.: Borrowing is a process in the physical world. Historically, however, it can be observed that during the transition to electronic media, the physical world is initially imitated. That's how it was with the printed book itself: the early printed book also acts as if it were a manuscript and not printed. At first he didn't even try to stand out from the handwritten works. Print type was only used later. Now we are once again in such a transitional period. A real 'loan' won't be around for long. There is also a lot of printing going on in the library at the moment. The students use the e-books to research, but then print out the relevant passages to work. Soon there will be no more printing at all. Scientific papers are researched using e-books, written on the PC, submitted by email and also read on the screen by professors.
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According to forecasts, printed books will gradually disappear from libraries. Libraries are full of them. It runs without a battery, you can read it even in the bright sun and if water splashes on it there is no risk of a short circuit. Nevertheless, the printed buck has had competition. The e-book is basically the optimization of that development,
