Reading and Writing the Electronic Book

Reviewer: Harold Borko

It was during the mid-1400s that Gutenberg invented the type mold which made printing from movable metal type practical. This lead to the development of the printing and book publishing industries. Over 500 years have passed and many improvements have been made, but the essential printing concepts of today are similar to those used by Gutenberg and his associates in producing their magnificent 42-line Bible. Now, as we enter the information age, entirely new technologies have been invented for use in the creation of electronic books and electronic document systems. Many of these new technologies have been developed at the Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship (IRIS) at Brown University. It is these developments that are described by the authors of this paper. After a brief introduction, the advantages and disadvantages of hard-copy print media are listed and briefly discussed. Books are portable, accessible, easy to read, and aesthetically appealing. However, they are limited to presenting information in a two-dimensional format composed of static text and graphics which readers cannot customize. Nor can they be easily updated to provide the most current information. Electronic document systems have been designed to overcome the disadvantages of print and to create “connectivity,” i.e., webs of elated information within a single document and among related documents, as well as links among scholars working together in “online communities.” Four such electronic document systems have been developed at Brown University: (1)FRESS (File Retrieval and Editing System), (2)The Electronic Document System (completed in 1982 and “far more modern than FRESS”), (3)BALSA (Brown Algorithm Simulator and Animator, “an environment designed to facilitate the creation of computer science and educational software”), and (4)Intermedia (“a multimedia system that will ideally provide most of the major capabilities desirable for a good electronic document system” and which is currently under development). This reviewer, unfortunately, has not used any of these systems and so cannot add any personal observations to the information provided by the authors. However, the concept is exciting and the implications for the future are many.