Are you getting sick and tired of the PDF as a reading format for ebooks? Join the crowd.
So, why has this boring yet efficient format continued to vex users and clog our collections of ejournals and ebooks? Change is coming, however, PDF continues to meet some rather basic needs that will have to be worked into the design of future academic products. Academics like having page numbers, having a peer-review piece set in 'stone' of some type so that changes cannot be slipped in - think of all of the hacking of Wikipedia, for example.
Against the Grain recently asked me to figure out when we might see the demise of the PDF for a news piece and the resulting article is available here.
The answer would appear to be don't hold your breath, we have a long way to go finding ways to incorporate innovation, multimedia, interactivity and others wonderful options with a need for stability, integrity and archival access. Will the PDF ever completely go away? I doubt it, we will always have some around to support in legacy systems.
However....innovation is coming, it may just take awhile to really take hold in the research sector. Check out the article and let me know what you think!
No comments:
Post a Comment