FUTURE OF PRINT MEDIA JOURNAL

Why e-Read? Finding Opportunities In the Merger Of Paper and Computers Dr. Bill Schilit Computer Science Researcher FX Palo Alto Laboratory A Fuji Xerox Company

Paper books are a functional and romantic icon of modern culture that are not casually discarded. Nevertheless, electronic reading appliances will revolutionize the way we work. This is not because e-books let us read the latest best-selling novel, but rather because e-books have the potential to display pages of many kinds, from office documents, to journals, letters, newspapers, magazines, and web pages, and they support analytic reading. Dr. Schilit predicts they will prove invaluable for knowledge workers.

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t is likely that most of you have heard of “e-books,” those reading appliances that, we are told, will change the world. Today, I’d like to consider the question “Why e-read?” For sure I’ll e-mail my family, e-ticket my vacations, e-trade stocks, and perhaps e-file my next tax return, but why e-read? What is better about e-books than paper books? Let’s start by considering what reading is and why people read. What is Reading? There are few technologies more ubiquitous than the printed word and because of this we often take reading for granted. Although reading is fundamentally seeing and comprehending words and sentences, people read for many different reasons and in many different ways. For example, studying a textbook is different from reResearch — April 4, 1999

viewing a court brief. Tables 1 and 2 list some of the many goals and processes associated with reading. To better understand the different kinds of reading, it is useful to characterize reading along two dimensions: the kind of engagement with a text and the breadth of the activity across texts. The educator Mortimer Adler (the author of How to Read a Book) describes our engagement with a text varying from “passive” to “active.” Active reading combines reading with critical thinking, learning, and decision making, whereas passive reading is less careful and less effortful. Active reading tends to involve not just reading per se, but also writing, especially annotating and note-taking. Students learning from a textbook practice active reading, as do lawyers performing case work, researchers keeping “up-todate,” and citizens deciding how to vote. Pas1 of 9

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FUTURE OF PRINT MEDIA JOURNAL sive reading, on the other hand, is what we tend to do with paperback fiction. The second dimension, breadth across texts, varies from focusing on a single text to reading multiple texts. Reading a single text may involve bookmarking and navigating, whereas extensive reading involves piling, sorting, filing, and switching among multiple texts. Finally, we can categorize different conventional reading situations using these dimensions (see Table 3). Passive-single is often associated with entertainment, for example enjoying a novel. Passive-multiple is often associated with keeping informed, for example, keeping up with e-mail (all those mailing lists!). Active-single is often associated with learning, such as studying a textbook or reviewing, such as evaluating a proposal. Complex decision-making and building a greater understanding of a problem or discipline through research is active-multiple.

These dimensions are useful for exploring the problems that readers face (see Table 4). At the very least, readers approaching a single text need to grasp the text’s meaning and understand unfamiliar words, concepts, and genres. Multiple-text reading raises problems of distributing, carrying, and locating texts. Active reading raises problems of finding information within a text, and responding to it in some way, for example by summarizing what you have learned or what you thought. Compounding these problems, active-multiple reading introduces a need to structure large quantities of information. These problems present opportunities for reading appliances. Computation can support active reading by providing ways to search, to summarize and to understand texts. Information networks and mass storage can support multipletext reading by providing access to many texts. By contrast, passive-single reading, e.g., reading a novel, benefits less from reading appliances.

About the Author Dr. Bill Schilit is a computer science researcher at FX Palo Alto Laboratory, a Fuji Xerox Company, where his work focuses on information appliances. Most recently he has been pondering how computers can help us read and developing next generation e-books (reading appliances). The work of his research group is described in the January issue of IEEE Computer in “As We May Read: The Reading Appliance Revolution.” Prior to joining Fuji Xerox, Bill was with AT&T Bell Labs where he led the TeleWeb project investigating how road warriors could browse the Web from laptop computers while disconnected or connected over cell phone data networks and LANs. Bill also has been a visiting scientist at Xerox PARC where he worked on the Ubiquitous Computing Initiative and developed the first palm-sized context-aware mobile computer. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University for studies in mobile and ubiquitous computing. Bill has published numerous research papers and holds 10 patents. He serves on the editorial board of IEEE Computer and IEEE Personal Communications. Contact Information: FX Palo Alto Laboratory, A Fuji Xerox Company, 3400 Hillview Avenue, Bldg. 4, Palo Alto, CA 94304, tel: 650.813.7220, e-mail: [email protected], website: www.fxpal.xerox.com/xlibris. Research — April 4, 1999

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FUTURE OF PRINT MEDIA JOURNAL Six Benefits of Reading Appliances Today we can build electronic reading appliances that imitate some of the qualities of paper books. Why will people give up paper to use such devices? I’ll present six important advantages that reading appliances introduce to reading: distribution; mobile information access; organizing; searching; filtering; and supporting different modes of reading. I’ll use the XLibris active reading appliance (Fig. 1) developed by our research group at FX Palo Alto Laboratory to illustrate these benefits, when appropriate. Distribution: Printing, distribution, retailing and retail returns are major expenses for publishers. Electronic distribution of books and documents on the other hand is both timely and cost effective. The general model is that a person connects his or her reading appliance to the Internet and downloads pages. One of the problems of electronic distribution is protecting intellectual property: The ease with which a legitimate publisher can distribute content also makes it easy for people to redistribute content illegally. Luckily there are technical solutions, such as designing a unique decryption key into each reading appliance. In this way reading appliances both facilitate distribution and protect electronic content. Mobile Information Access: Abdul Kassem Ismael, Grand Vizier of Persia in the tenth century, carried his library with him wherever he went. The 117,000 volumes were carried by 400 camels, which were trained to walk in alphabetical order. — A History of Reading, Alberto Manguel

Paper requires planning: A person can carry only a few books or documents and must know in advance which ones will be needed. Reading appliances, on the other hand, are a platform for anytime, anywhere access. A large storage device can be loaded with all of a person’s workResearch — April 4, 1999

READING OUT LOUD

READING ALL THE WORDS

Speedreading

Scanning for names or terms

Riffling through pages; sorting through piles

Browsing overviews, indexes and bibliographies

Following references and footnotes

Annotating or note-taking

Clipping, copying, bookmarking, organizing

Rereading the text or reviewing notes

Table 1: Examples of Reading Processes FOR FOR ENTERTAINMENT INSPIRATION To self-inform

To learn

To keep up-to-date

To prepare for a discussion

To find facts or check them

To solve or analyze a problem

To follow directions To edit To fill out a form

To review

Table 2: Examples of Reading Goals ing and supporting reference material. Furthermore, paper documents are a snapshot in time, whereas reading appliances with networking provide access to dynamic and up-to-date information such as is found on the World Wide Web and on corporate Intranets. Reading appliances can connect via wireless networks, cellular telephones, or through the office local area network, according to how quickly the readers want the information and how much they are willing to pay for it. << Prev

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SINGLE TEXT

MULTIPLE TEXTS

PASSIVE

ACTIVE

understanding the text

understanding the text finding information within a text summarizing

understanding the text carrying lots of documents finding interesting documents

understanding the text carrying lots of documents finding relevant documents structuring lots of documents

Table 3: Problems people face and opportunities for reading appliances

SINGLE TEXT

MULTIPLE TEXTS

PASSIVE

ACTIVE

enjoying a novel reading a poem aloud

studying a textbook reviewing a proposal diagnosing with a manual

keeping up with e-mail browsing the newspaper surfing the web

researching a problem surveying a field keeping up-to-date professionally

Table 4: Categories for reading situations Organizing: Computers can help us organize large collections of information. First, with searching on a full text index there is less need to file information. Also, computer managed meta-data, like creation and access dates, can help people filter their documents in useful ways. Computers also let us do things that we can’t do in the physical world, such as putting a document in two places at once (e.g., using links or shortcuts). Computer-assisted organization is another reason for people to switch to reading appliances. For example, the XLibris Reader’s Notebook uses a reader’s free- form annotations to organize readings. When readers review paper documents they are often aided by the annotations made during a previous reading. There are three common venues for these annotations: marking on the Research — April 4, 1999

page, taking notes in a notebook, and writing on loose-leaf paper or index cards. Annotations on the page highlight key information but tend to be lost in piles of paper. Notebooks are compact and can be reviewed quickly, but taking notes is tedious and error-prone. Unbound notes can be reorganized flexibly, but they capture even less context than a notebook because they lack a note-taking chronology. XLibris introduces the concept of a Reader’s Notebook that combines the best features of annotating directly on the page, of taking notes in a separate notebook, and of organizing index cards. As with paper documents, readers mark on the page, in the context of the document, and without tedious and error-prone copying. As with a bound notebook, readers can review concise annotations by time. Finally, as with note << Prev

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Figure 1: The XLibris Active Reading Appliance provides a paper document metaphor for working with electronic documents: Readers can easily flip through full-page images by touching the screen, can hold the device in their laps and tilt it to avoid glare, and can freely annotate. cards, filtering and sorting of the annotations allow readers to reorganize their information as their needs change. The Reader’s Notebook (Fig. 2) extracts clippings of annotated text and lays them end-toend in a multi-page view. Each clipping is linked to the annotated page, so the reader can move Research — April 4, 1999

easily between notes and documents. Each clipping includes some surrounding text and is labeled with document title and page number to help the reader understand the meaning of the marks. In designing clippings, we had to decide how much of the document should be shown for each annotation. Our current approach is to take the << Prev

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FUTURE OF PRINT MEDIA JOURNAL pile of annotated paper documents, but should be faster because readers need not deal with less important (i.e., un-annotated) information. Finally, readers can filter the clippings by ink color to search for different kinds of marks or to group related items together. Some readers of paper documents already use different pens to mark different types of information. For example, some lawyers highlight “pro” information in green and “con” information in red. The Reader’s Notebook gives readers a quick and easy way to review and organize not only the documents they’ve read, but also their ideas and comments.

Figure 2: The Reader’s Notebook shows annotated clippings of documents laid end-to-end. Clippings are labeled with document title and page number and are linked to the corresponding pages. bounding rectangle of each ink stroke and expand it horizontally to the width of the column, and vertically to include complete words. Snippets that overlap are merged together, resulting in reasonably sized clippings of annotated text. The Reader’s Notebook can display clippings from one document or from all documents and can be sorted and filtered. The system maintains a separate ink index so these operations are rapid even for large document collections. By default, clippings are sorted by time, so that new information appears at the end, as in a paper notebook. Clippings also can be sorted by page number. Searching through clippings sorted by page number is analogous to rummaging through a Research — April 4, 1999

Searching & Filtering: Once a text is stored electronically, it is possible to perform computer text operations such as word search. Moreover, a reader can query across many documents and even query network-based repositories. Specialized information retrieval techniques create another reason for people to switch to reading appliances. For example, XLibris has introduced the idea of Further Reading Lists that are generated from a reader’s free-form annotations. When readers reach the end of a document, they often want to know more. The document may not emphasize the topic they are most interested in, or it may spark an interest in a new topic without providing enough depth or detail. The editors of Scientific American help readers go into more depth by adding a further reading list at the end of each article. But Scientific American further reading lists rely on the editor’s ability to predict reader interests. Consider an article describing a technological vision for protecting digital copyrights and a reader with a narrower interest, such as “how digital copyright affects librarians.” The further reading list reference to an article on digital copyright law may help him track down this information, but is unlikely to answer his ques<< Prev

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Figure 3: A skimming view of a document in XLibris. The darker the term, the more representative it is of the document as a whole.

tion directly. Furthermore, by the time the reader encounters the further reading list in print, more appropriate articles may have been written. The XLibris reading appliance augments this traditional editorial practice by automatically generating further reading lists for each document. Unlike the Scientific American references, these lists reflect the interests of a specific reader at a specific point in time. How are these lists created? XLibris recognizes readers’ free-form ink annotations and uses them to compute queries. Although it is possible to use a defined vocabulary of explicit marks that the reader must learn, we instead use heuristics that are based on general annotation practices. An underlined or circled word, circled or barred passages, and marginalia each generate slightly different queries for the search engine built into XLibris. Marks that select specific words translate into queries that emphasize those words over others in the same sentence. Marks that select longer passages generate queries that search for similar phrases. The termweighted query is then issued on a full text index of all documents present on the reading appliance (the reach of a search easily could be extended to digital libraries on the Internet). The search results are formatted into the reading list Research — April 4, 1999

of matching passages with each entry linked to the retrieved documents, allowing an easy transition between searching and reading. Supporting Different Modes of Reading: Experienced readers do not read continuously at the same speed and with the same intensity. Instead, they read the more important parts in depth and speed read the less important, and skim for places to start reading or to find a fact. Computers can help with these different kinds of reading. First, computers simply can increase the type size of an electronic text making reading less tiring. Another aspect of reading is grasping the structure, and computers can help by showing outlines and summaries. A major part of deep reading is understanding the text; computers can help here with dictionary definitions or foreign language translations. Computer-assisted reading is another reason for people to switch to reading appliances. Again, let’s turn to the XLibris active reading appliance to see how computers can help readers skim. Skimming typically involves looking for interesting or relevant terms on the page to gain a quick impression of its contents. When skimming, the reader’s eyes search for and alight on key words and take in short passages before << Prev

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“

A tool that can significantly augment our ability to learn and manage written information will prove invaluable for knowledge workers.

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moving on. Sometimes the reader becomes engaged and shifts into deep reading, or is distracted and moves into quicker skimming or into riffling. XLibris’ “skimming mode” highlights phrases and sentences that are characteristic of the document being skimmed. We call out key phrases because they can be read at a glance and reflect the topic of the text. Similarly, the Wall Street Journal and People Magazine help readers find information by boldfacing company names and Hollywood celebrities. We also highlight key sentences to support transition from skimming to deep reading: key sentences can help readers decide whether a passage is worth reading and are likely to be appropriate places to transition to deep reading. Skimming mode uses shades from gray to black to reflect a statistically computed term “importance value” (Fig. 3). Visually, common words and phrases fade away into light gray and more important terms stand out in darker shades of gray and black. Phrases with a higher importance level occur often in the current document but occur rarely in other documents (e.g. in this article, “reading appliance” would have a high value). Key sentences are identified by a text summarizer. However, unlike a summarization, Research — April 4, 1999

the skimming mode preserves the context of the key phrases and sentences. Integrating the Paper And Computer Worlds We live in two worlds, the world of paper documents and the world of electronic documents. Reading appliances bridge these two worlds. We can move (i.e. print) electronic documents into the reading appliance and use them as if they were on paper. This platform is particularly important for multimedia and hypermedia documents because they can’t be presented on paper. Also, we can scan paper documents into reading appliances and use them as if they were electronic. From the reading appliance, we can print to paper or move information back to the electronic world. For example, by copying and pasting we can take useful excerpts and move them back onto the desktop word processor. Network-based digital libraries increase the availability of information, but people still tend to print the documents to work with them. A document appliance is a new platform for accessing digital libraries that preserves the benefits of having information online while providing many of the advantages of paper. Electronic book and document readers will neither replace paper nor will they replace desktop computers. Instead, we predict, they will occupy their own unique and valuable role in knowledge work, bringing the paper and computer worlds closer together. A Prediction Those who predict that printed circuit boards will replace all of our printed books are mistaken. Paper books are a functional and romantic icon of modern culture that are not casually discarded. Nevertheless, reading appliances will revolutionize the way we work. This is not because e-books let us read the latest best-selling novel, but rather << Prev

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FUTURE OF PRINT MEDIA JOURNAL because e-books have the potential to display pages of many kinds, from office documents, to journals, letters, newspapers, magazines, and web pages, and they support analytic reading. A tool that can significantly augment our ability to learn and manage written information will prove invaluable for knowledge workers. Before reading appliances become successful, they need to be made more usable, more useful, and more valuable. Towards the usability goal, human factors researchers at our laboratory and elsewhere are analyzing the benefits

of paper documents and understanding how to design paper-like computers that share paper’s user-friendliness. Inventing reading appliances that are more useful than paper remains a challenge; we have provided a number of examples of features that may prove useful. Finally, the value for a reading appliance product needs to outweigh its costs and deficiencies. It is likely that the first truly successful reading appliance will be targeted at analytic readers, such as analysts, lawyers, or corporate decision-makers, whose time is extremely valuable. ■

This article can be found on the Future of Print Media website at:

http://www.futureprint.kent.edu/articles/schilit01.htm ©1999 Kent State University School of Journalism and Mass Communication PO Box 5190, Kent, OH 44242 Tel: 330.672.2572 • Fax: 330.672.4064 E-mail: [email protected] Permission is granted for non-profit educational uses. Authors retain all commercial rights to their articles.

Research — April 4, 1999

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