A Study of Reading with Dedicated E-Readers

Dissertation by Miriam Schcolnik Available Online

By Planet eBook Editor
October 5, 2001

Miriam Schconik recently completed her 150 page dissertation on E-Readers and now she has made it available to all of us for download. Earlier this year Miriam called on the online eBook community for its involvement through participation in the Web survey that formed one component of her in depth study. In it she asked asked readers using devices like the Rocket eBook, iPaq, Jornada 545 & 548, REB 1100 & 1200, eBookMan, Softbook and Palm to questions about their reading habits.

As an introduction to the dissertation, Miriam has kindly let Planet eBook republish the Abstract below:

Abstract

Given the prediction that in the future our reading could be mainly digital and the fact that e-readers are one of the emerging technologies, we need to understand what these devices are suitable for. This study answered the following questions: What strategies do adult users of e-readers apply to reading in the new medium? Does the new medium lend itself more to certain purposes of reading? What kinds of texts do users read in dedicated e-readers? What characteristics should texts for e-reading have? Data were gathered using a web survey in which 105 people participated, and a case study in which five subjects were observed and interviewed. The findings of the research help clarify the strategies used in the e-reader medium, as well as preferred uses, types of texts, and e-reader characteristics.

Attitudes towards e-readers are clearly positive among respondents. Both in e-reading for information and in e-reading for pleasure the most used strategy is paging. In e-reading for pleasure navigation is almost exclusively linear. Most of the respondents prefer portrait layout and paging over scrolling. The most important feature of e-texts is a table of contents. Next in importance are hyperlinks, illustrations, page numbers, headings, and highlighted words. The most important features of e-readers are legibility, portability, easy navigation, ample storage, and ease of use. For the present generation of e-readers, it seems the medium lends itself more to reading for pleasure. Other likely purposes of e-reading are escape, staying informed, review and study, in that order.

E-readers have not been around too long, but for most respondents using an e-reader has become a normal activity, having replaced (totally or partially) computer and print reading. Most respondents prefer reading with their dedicated devices than reading from their desktop computers.

This investigation contributes to our knowledge about e-reading, users’ preferences, and the effects of the new technology on reading practices. Future research could check the reasons for specific preferences, why navigation strategies are more common than study strategies, and the effect of e-readers on attention while reading.

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