Electronic Book
Barker (1993, p. 151) originally defined electronic books as a “…form of book whose pages were composed not of static printer’s ink but from dynamic electronic information.” Barker (1993, p. 151) amended that definition to state that electronic books are a “…collection of reactive and dynamic pages of multimedia information.” These collections of pages represent the content (books) that are read with a reading device.
Electronic Book Metaphor
Electronic book metaphors are defined as elements of electronic books, such as a search tool, that are applied to the design of electronic books but that are not based on traditional paper book metaphors. (Henke, 2000)
Electronic Book Application
A software application such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, IBM BookManager, or Microsoft Reader that is used to read electronic books as defined above. Often, people refer to both the application and the content as an electronic book but with the advent of standards that define the format of an electronic book, it would be more appropriate to separate an application used to read an electronic book from the content itself, which should be referred to as the electronic book. (Henke, 2000)
Electronic Book Reader
Borchers (1999, p. 1) defined an electronic book as: “…portable hardware and software system that can display large quantities of readable textual information to the user and that lets the user navigate through this information.” Lemken (1999, p. 1) provided a simpler definition of electronic books as “…a mobile, physical device [used] to display electronic (digital) documents.”
Genre
Levy (1994) defined genre as a method to classify documents according to the purpose, role, and function. Genre defines how the document should be used based on user expectations and experiences such as a newspaper where users expect headline size to indicate importance. Users would expect that a technical product manual would be organized differently than a novel or newspaper and expect to read a technical product manual differently than a novel or newspaper.
Hypermedia
Bieber et al. (1997, p. 3) provided a definition of hypermedia, which is: “a concept that encourages authors to structure information as an associative network of nodes and interrelating links”. Bieber et al. also stated that the terms hypertext and hypermedia are often used interchangeably. For the purposes of this research, the term hypermedia can also refer to an electronic book as the terms hypermedia and electronic book are used interchangeably in many articles and studies.
Paper Book Metaphor
Paper book metaphors are defined as elements of traditional paper books, such as table of contents, that are transferred from paper to electronic books. (Henke, 2000)
Barker, P. (1992, September). Design Guidelines for Electronic Books, Proceedings of NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Multimedia Interface Design in Education, (pp. 83-96), Lucca, Italy.
Bieber, M., Vitali, F., Ashman, H., Balasubramanian, V., and Onias-Kukkonen, H. (1997), Fourth Generation Hypermedia: Some Missing Links for the World Wide Web, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 47, pp. 31-65.
Borchers, J. O. (1999), Electronic Books: Definition, Genres, and Interaction Design Patterns, ACM CHI 1999, Electronic Book Workshop. Available online: http://www.fxpal.com/chi99deb/
Henke, H. (2000), In Process Dissertation: A Study of the Use of Paper Book Metaphors in the Design of Electronic Books, Nova-Southeastern University.
Lemken, B. (1999), Ebook – the Missing Link Between Paper and Screen, ACM CHI 1999, Electronic Book Workshop. Available online: http://www.fxpal.com/chi99deb/
Levy, D.M. (1994), Fixed or Fluid? Document Stability and New Media