There's nothing new about the debate surrounding the future of the book. Pundits argue that books will disappear as pixilated screens and monitors replace printed texts and card catalogs. Others say that digital books will never replace the look and feel of the printed page.
Now researchers conducting a new study hope to introduce empirical evidence into the emotional debate over publishing's future by examining what digital books are and how people use them.
Until now, neither side has had substantive data to back their arguments.
"They haven't got a shred of evidence," said Paul Mosher, vice provost and director of libraries for the University of Pennsylvania.
"No one has done a rigorous, analytical study of use," agreed Edward Barry, president of Oxford University Press-USA.
Backed by a $218,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the University of Pennsylvania Library will spend the next five years publishing online every new history work produced by Oxford University Press.
Researchers hope to gain insight into how digital texts impact teaching, research, and learning. They also want to determine whether digital books will replace or supplement printed texts.
"I expect that before the five years are up we will find out how these books are used," Barry said.
Penn community members can download the digital replicas of printed books for free through the digital library website.
Others can sample a selection of three works through the public site.
The site already hosts over 70 complete digital replicas, and expects to grow at a rate of 300 to 400 titles per year.
"We can put them up faster than they can ship them to us," Mosher said.
With hyperlinks and dynamic search capabilities, electronic books may widen readership and potentially provide more use than physical books, Barry said. Multimedia enhancements can engage readers to learn in ways they might not be able to using printed texts.
The study will examine the cost and mechanics of digital book distribution to see whether demand will meet production costs.
Putting a book online is considerably less expensive and faster than producing traditional textbooks. "It's real cheap and real fast," Mosher said.
But despite the advantages of electronic books, people may not be ready to give up the printed page.
"There's not much of a place for online books at this point in time," said Mary Summerfield, coordinator for Columbia University's Online Books Project. But as online books get easier to read, they will have a good future, she added.
Columbia's project, which launched five years ago, found that students were not yet ready for digital books for full-purpose reading.
"People were not keen to read online at length," Summerfield said.
Although students were willing to read portions of a book online, "If scholars wanted to use a book extensively, they wanted a print copy to look at," she said.
Libraries are willing to buy online books, but with fixed budgets, they can't always afford to buy both electronic and print versions.
"As screen technology improves, people will be more willing to read online," Summerfield said. "We're not there yet."
Penn's study could help publishers decide how to market, price, and package their books directly to users. The results could reveal whether readers will use electronic reading devices such as the Rocket eBook to scroll big textbooks and monographs.
"Users like something that looks like a book," Mosher said. "They don't want stacks of files."
The study may also help librarians decide which options are best to deliver electronic books. New players like netLibrary, which sells collections of digital books to libraries, allow students to check out electronic books without ever leaving their dorm rooms.
But Penn's project may not reveal whether people will actually buy digital books.
"It's hard to try in the marketplace without getting stung," Summerfield said, adding that since Penn's project doesn't sell digital books, they have yet to be tested in a real marketplace.
"We're back to the basic question: How does this work?" Summerfield asked.
Studies like the Penn project, however, may encourage publishers who are hesitant to provide online materials to digitize collections.
"To have success (publishers) must have a good, solid collection of materials online," Summerfield said. "This is a high potential area which everyone should be examining."
Digital replicas may actually boost print sales as more students read texts online, Penn's Mosher predicted.
The digital library program "will be very popular and very useful," he said. "But if they're interested in the subject, they will buy the book."
"There will be demand," agreed Oxford University Press' Barry. "People will find out that there are things you can do with digital books that you can't do with printed books and there will be room for both."
