E- BOOK

e- Stands for electronic

An e book is simply electronic copies of regular, printed books and are normally chaptered and indexed in same way or An electronic book or e-book or e-Book or digital book is a text- and image-based publication in digital form produced on, published by, and readable on computers or other digital devices. "Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines the e-book as "an electronic version of a printed book” but e-books can and do exist without any printed equivalent. E-books are usually read on dedicated hardware devices known as e-Readers or e-book devices. Personal computers and some cell phones can also be used to read e-books.

        An e-book is created by scanning the pages of a traditional book in to PDF format, and then uploaded to the Internet for distribution. Number of e book formats emerged and proliferated, some supported by major software companies such as Adobe with its PDF format, and others supported by independent and open-source programmers.

DEFENITION

•  “An electronic version of book” (Webopedia)
•  At its simplest level, an e- book consist of electronic content “Originating from traditional book, reference materials or magazines” that is down loaded from the INTERNET and viewed trough any number of hardware devices. These include computers or dedicated e book reader. (Ana Arias Terry)
•  “An e-book, is a portable hardware software system that can display large quantities of readable textual information to the user and that lets the user navigate through this information” (Jan o. Broachers)

CHARACTERISTICS

• It must include commending and chatting tools.
• It must allow user to add link to external resources.
• It must be portable transferable and searchable.
• It must provide us with annotation, video, hyper-links.

KINDS OF e-BOOK

• According to Don Hawkins, e-books are following type;
• Down loadable e-book. (e.g.:- Glass books and Guttenberg )
• Dedicated e-book readers (e.g.:- Gemstar’s REBs and Franklins e-book man )
• Print-on-demand books (e.g.:- Columbia university online book project)
• Web-accessible e-books :on provider & accessed for a fee (e.g.:-Springer e-book collection )

ADVANTAGES
• For users
-Searching: - capability to search within a book and across a collection of book.
-Customization: - One can customize the e book by changing its display, brightness, font size, and style. More over one can manipulate the text also.
-Accessibility and availability: - Easy access and non demand availability (accessible anytime, anywhere any person).
-Linking facility: - It can link to other external resources, including dictionaries and thesauri.
-Other features: - It include navigability, glossary look up, book marking, high lighting and annotate the content etc…

· For Libraries
-No risk of lose, damage, theft, misplace
-No physical space requirement.
-No specialized device requirements for access to its content. Etc…………

DISADVANTAGE
· Potential obsoleteness in the viewing technology.
· Difficult in identifying e title from publishers websites.
· Cost of device is regarded as a negative factor and there for the expense of these device is one of the major drawback to their wide spread use.