About the Merit of an e-Reader as a Single-Purpose Device

Despite the popularity of an e-book reader, I was never really tempted to purchase a Nook or a Kindle.  I figured since I have an iPad, it would be completely pointless to own and use a e-book reader, which I understood mostly as a single-purpose device. (But to confess, I didn’t use my iPad much for reading… )

This conviction, however, was completely swept away since I had taken out a library Kindle a few days ago. I never thought that someone like me, who is a firm believer in the superiority of a multi-purpose device (like a smartphone) to a single-purpose device, would become a fan of a single-purpose e-reader.

Kindle I took out from the library

The university library (which is separate from the library where I work which belongs to the same university but to its medical school) has recently started lending Kindle devices loaded with a number of e-books.  As soon as I heard the news, I ran down to the circulation desk to check it out for curiosity.  Sure, I had seen an e-book reader before. But there is a world of difference between just looking at a device and tinkering with it for a few minutes and actually using it for oneself for days and weeks.  So, I was eager to test it out myself.

I decided to read the e-book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which I have been meaning to read for a while but never found time to. To my surprise, I found myself enjoying the library e-reader way more than I expected.

I loved the much lighter weight and the much less eye-straining screen of a Kindle (compared to my first-generation iPad).  But what I loved most about this e-reader was actually its limitation. The fact that I can do nothing but reading.

The greatest problem I had with an iPad ‘as an e-reader’ was that aside from its weight and the eye-straining screen, I could not really concentrate on reading for a long time. I don’t know if this is a non-issue for others with stronger willpower. But for me, this was certainly a big problem. While reading, I would get easily distracted into web surfing, checking e-mails, and reading tweets and Facebook updates.  On the other hand, on this single-purpose device, it was easy to continue reading for a much longer time. Sometimes, I would have an urge to go online and do something else. But often I would just ignore the urge as I simply didn’t feel like moving.

Of course, I am not sure if this virtue of a single-purpose device would apply beyond reading, and for that matter, beyond leisure reading.  If I were reading for research, I would prefer more robust annotation options as well as easy importing and exporting of documents, which would be much easier on a multi-purpose device.  I may well also prefer to be able to easily surf the Internet to search and download whatever document I find useful and start reading it right then and there.

Nevertheless, I found it interesting to think about the merit of a single-purpose device in the times in which multi-purpose devices are more and more prevalent.  Maybe we will always have a multi-purpose device and a single-purpose device no matter how advanced technology becomes just like a Swiss Army Knife and a normal knife.  Or would more and more devices converge into a few?

*** An additional bonus of a library Kindle is that it comes with more than one book.  The borrowing period for this Kindle is two weeks, but I am done with the book already.  So after browsing +90 library books that I did not know about, I decided on reading another book.  As a librarian, I like the fact that a library e-reader preloaded with multiple library books offer an opportunity for a user to discover more than the one title s/he selected.  But also as a librarian, I disliked the fact that the copies of +90 e-books are sitting idly in the device while a user is only using one title.  Would there be a possible compromise between these two options? 

 

About Bohyun (Library Hat)

Bohyun Kim is the Associate University Librarian for Library Information Technology at the University of Michigan Library. Formerly, she was the Chief Technology Officer and Professor at the University of Rhode Island Libraries.
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2 Responses to About the Merit of an e-Reader as a Single-Purpose Device

  1. Kradak Thomas says:

    I’m happy to see that you’ve been bitten by the single-purpose e-reader bug. Single-purpose tools are beautiful things: chef’s knives, tuning forks, manual lathes.

    I am curious to know if the concept of having single kindles available for checkout, loaded with multiple books, can be a solution to the suggested practice in e-book licensing to limit library lending to N loans for X dollars, since you would be lending the kindle, not the electronic version.

    I can envision a future, though, in which professors have two dozen library kindles shelved above their desks, perpetually checked out, and essentially rendered unavailable to mere students for brose or read!

  2. Thanks for the comment! I don’t think loaning the device itself is not a solution to the license limit that ebook publishers impose on library lending. I think if you purchase a Kindle ebook, for example, it can be on 6 devices and not more. So after than new license needs to be purchased. But book publishers may bring out a different model. It is an interesting topic to watch out for future development.

    As a library patron, I love that I can borrow a device loaded with ebooks since I don’t need to wrangle with my own personal device to download the library e-book. On the other hand, as a librarian I have some concerns, one of which is having +90 books locked up in one device that can be checked out to one person only at a time.

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