The holiday season is at hand, and many signs suggest that thousands of people are finding themselves new owners of electronic book (“eBook”) readers. Whether it’s an Amazon Kindle, a Barnes & Noble Nook, a Sony Reader, or any of the less heavily advertised devices currently on the market, electronic book readers are being trumpeted as a product that has finally hit the mainstream after years on the bleeding-edge. eBook readers, in fact, do have the potential to radically reshape how books are read. Equally important, though, they are already reshaping how books are bought and owned.

The printed book is an amazing piece of technology. Light-weight and portable, a hardcopy book requires no electricity and can be used in just about any environment that has sufficient light to show the printed words. And, although it wasn’t a primary design objective, printed books are easily archived, surviving

Articles, Digital information system
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