Slides from presentation at Future of Technology in Educatioin 2012 conference at Senate House, University of London

1. Roll-your-own e-
books
...what's not to love?
Richard M. Davis
#FOTE12 Digital Archives & Research Technologies
7th October 2012 University of London Computer Centre

2. What is an e-book?
Electronic books are distinct from books in terms of
media, distribution, functionality, management, quantity,
copyright and fair use, information technology, cost,
typology of e-books, reading device specificity or lack
thereof, pricing, accessibility,publishing model, book
news and peer reviews, service model, quality
assurance, standards and interoperability, user
preferences, layout and paging, and contextual reading.
E. Carreiro (2010).
`Electronic Books: How Digital Devices and Supplementary New Technologies
are Changing the Face of the Publishing Industry'.
Publishing Research Quarterly26(4):219-235.

3. What is an e-book?
1. An e-book is a digital object with textual and/or other
content, which arises as a result of integrating the
familiar concept of a book with features that can be
provided in an electronic environment.
2. E-books, typically have in-use features such as search
and cross reference functions, hypertext links,
bookmarks, annotations, highlights, multimedia objects
and interactive tools.
Magda Vassiliou, Jennifer Rowley (2008).
'Progressing the definition of "e-book"'.
Library Hi Tech, Vol 26 No 3.

4. Evolution of e-books

5. Evolution of e-books

6. Evolution of E-books

7. Amazon Kindle Store

8. Apple iTunes / iTunesU

9. OU @ iTunesU

10. Doing it yourself: EPUB
An EPUB e-book is an encapsulated website...

11. Doing it yourself: EPUB
● HTML (XHTML/HTML5)
● CSS
● Image formats: JPG, PNG, GIF
● Relative URLs
EPUB defines standards for Container,
Packaging and Content structure (some
differences between Version 2.01 & Version 3)

12. Doing it yourself:
Word processor

13. Doing it yourself: Calibre

14. Calibre

15. Doing it yourself: online

16. Doing it yourself: online

17. Doing it yourself: Wikipedia

18. The Study Pack
Approach (1990)

19. The Study Pack
Approach (2012)

20. The VLE Approach

21. The VLE Approach

22. Anthologizr for EPrints
● Funded by JISC under Library System
Programme (June - November 2012)
● Allow repository users to define
collections and export as e-book
● Plugin for EPrints (EPrints Bazaar)
● Report on approach and issues

23. Anthologizr for EPrints
Aspirations
● Promote use of OA versions of articles
(and other PD/CC resources)
● Promote use of open/transformable
formats
● Be a small nail in the coffin of out-dated
fetish with PDF data-unfriendly fixed-
format pseudo-paper

24. Anthologizr: articles and
chapters

25. Anthologizr: image collections

26. Give me convenience...
The Next Web
http://v.gd/oseyow

27. Concludingly
● E-books took a long time coming but they
are here to stay
● E-readers and tablets everywhere
● Format increasingly ubiquitous, well-
understood, extensible and hackable
● E-book anthologies of study packs offer
many advantages
if we can get round issues like copyright and PDF conversion

28. Thank you!
richard.davis@london.ac.uk
#FOTE12
7th October 2012