Love eBooks for reading but I still need paper

I have been reading on line, on screen and with eReaders for a number of years, I value the reader features on my smart phone and certainly crack through a lot of content to feed my mind and keep me informed.

I use google docs for collaboration and commenting, I detest local document editing tools and avoid accumulating paper records, I scan everything and shred originals but I still need paper for periods of time and here is why from my own perspective.

Sometimes I want to read and annotate a document and experience in the way that the author or published intended it to be read. It is an experience, there is something organic about touching and experiencing the paper.

Sometimes I want to work with a document while Ido something else, I want to refer to it jump around, look things up in all manner of places and electronic equivalents simply do not support that easily or in a way that is efficient and easy to use.

I like using book marks you know those non sticky stick ones that you can add some text to. I like to have the page open to refer to while i follow instructions. I may want have dirty hands and a book or paper version is easier to work with or dispose of at the end.

I know others who like the book on the shelf, the evidence of experience a memory of past endeavours the covers of books like album covers evoke memories in the same way as smells and sounds can do. I think it can create an environment but I am not sure I need the external evidence of reading as the content is integrated into my mind and experience but seeing a book can invoke a memory and act as a prompt to a different course of action or way of thing.

I was given a new eReader for my birthday and I went through my library of books online, I joined Goodreads and did some rating and it made me realise how much of my content was now digital, easy to access but not as usable as the paper it replaced in some contexts. I have just ordered a book in paper form I own digitally because I know I want to refer to it a lot and it won’t work as a eBook.

Perhaps we will see the digital version of books being something you get when you by a physical one, perhaps when you buy a digital one we will see offers of get the paper one for a discounted price, maybe we see it being treated as one product with different form factors.

In short I want the content, but I may want to consume it in different ways at different times. Many eReaders prevent you from making snippets of the text you are reading, yes you can highlight and add notes but you cannot cut and paste as a quote into another document. I am sure for the all the digital rights management reasons any seasoned lawyer can put forward but it is human to refer to things, to quote things and share things. This is one of the weaknesses of the current eReader paradigm because vendors are trying to lock readers into a platform and community they control and where they set the rules. We need to have an open platform which allows people to collaborate across any reader and form factor.

There is a set of core functions within eDocuments, ability to highlight, make notes, share snippets, cut and paste and link to specific items at a precise location from within another document. The ability to integrate, annotate and of course read and interface to accessibility tools to make them accessible in a number of ways. That takes interoperability to make it possible to do something in one environment and use it in another without problems. We need standards to emerge, but who will drive this, certainly not those with commercial agenda’s and vested interests about controlling access and the lifetime value of their customers. There has been attempt to track initiatives around eReader interoperability and there is work underway to manage the meta data of books, publications and how they are categorised so searching, cataloging and finding becomes easier and access to knowledge about the content there is in the world is easy to find

In short paper has a role and so does interoperability across form factors and walled gardens. Commercial models need to mature because after all we are simply individuals trying to interact with the world in multiple contexts and that means moving information around easily and seamlessly and we are prone to change our minds, have different needs and experiment with different approaches.