ABSTRACT
The next generation of adults already recognizes the electronic medium as its chief source of textual information. People knowledge repositories increasingly favor digital products over the print resources that have been their mainstay for centuries. Perspectives on the relationship of audience to the electronic book come from a number of disciplines, and debates about reading in hypermedia environments often become mired in philosophical disagreements among these disciplines regarding what constitutes a satisfactory reading experience. The design of computer interfaces for researchers working with electronic texts requires a combination of specialist areas of inquiry, including the ethnographic study of information-seeking behaviors, diagnostic performance evaluation of existing interfaces, and iterative design and usability study of new design prototypes. Among the features pertaining to books and e-books, tangibility is strongly associated with the book as a physical artifact, while hybridity is strongly associated with digital texts.
