If you have an iPad, you have a number of choices of where to get e-book content. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google, etc. all offer iPad apps whereby you can buy their content and read it on your iPad. These apps also work on iPhones and iPod Touch devices as well as Android, Blackberry, etc. Apple recently changed the rules and demanded a cut from in-app purchases. The booksellers responded by removing in-app purchases thus making it a bit more difficult to purchase their content. But the intent remains to make content available across multiple platforms.
Contrary to this, is a trend among some publishers to make e-book apps specific to the iOS platform and sell them as apps via the Apple app store. This may be a trend to be concerned about in and of itself. Will it interfere with competition if a student needs to buy an iPad because content that s/he needs is only available on that platform?
But for now, I'm more interested in the potential and the use of technology to convey more information than is available within traditional books.
Initially, we saw it in kids book apps like PopOut! The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Not only could you have the story read to you but there were images that could be manipulated to make the characters move and make noises. Much like a traditional popup book but with audio included.
Then came books that were really more like movies with text included. Among my favorites in this genre are the Moving Tales books including This Too Shall Pass. These books include a 3D movie that goes along with the story. Reportedly this movie changes each time you watch it but I haven't read any of them enough to say whether or the changes are noticeable and/or alter the story considerably. You can also choose to replace the voice of the narrator with your own. So, the stories can be personalized.
From there we move to The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. This is not only a movie but one with interactive elements. You can make objects spin and fly. And the character ends up running a library, so what's not to like?
For students, there is an app version of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. It includes performances of the poem, perspectives, facsimiles of the manuscript. I wish I'd had apps like this when I was taking English classes, it would have made some works of literature so much more understandable, accessible and relevant.
The final e-book app, I'd like to bring to your attention is Our Choice. This is a quote from the description in iTunes:
Al Gore's Our Choice will change the way we read books. And quite possibly change the world. In this interactive app, Al Gore surveys the causes of global warming and presents groundbreaking insights and solutions already under study and underway that can help stop the unfolding disaster of global warming.
Our Choice melds the vice president's narrative with photography, interactive graphics, animations, and more than an hour of engrossing documentary footage. A new, groundbreaking interface allows you to experience that content seamlessly. Pick up and explore anything you see in the book; zoom out to the visual table of contents and quickly browse though the chapters; reach in and explore data-rich interactive graphics.
It really is an interactive multimedia experience.
So, what does all this mean for libraries? I think that apps like these are fundamentally changing people's expectations about how information is presented. It's no longer enough to just present it but children are being taught that they can interact with a story and change it.
For older students and adults, we're able to customize and personalize our content and our experiences with it. Plus, the entire app store is geared toward instant gratification. You read or hear about a new book, search for it in the app store, purchase and download it to your iPad or iPhone. The entire process takes only a few minutes. And there's the potential for continuous updates and revisions.
Whenever anyone brings up the topic of e-books, there will always be someone who attempts to cut short the conversation by asserting that s/he likes books. I don't think that position has any validity any more for the library community. We have to ask ourselves, what is a book nowadays? And what is our responsibility in providing content? If e-books are moving to multimedia and interactive formats, how do we provide that experience for our users?
