Why do we digitize books instead of knowledge?

Abstract

Besides text and images, contemporary e-books can include multimedia, interactivity, pronunciation information and text-to-speech ready content. The current EPUB 3 standard provides all the technical solutions necessary for designing and displaying highly functional and content rich e-books, but the implementation is impaired by the e-reader industry, publishers and distributors. Local and global book digitization has been an ongoing process for years, encompassing publications ranging from classical literature to current technical textbooks. Textual expression of knowledge is a remnant of the past but it is still dominant today, even though interactivity and video content are known to significantly enhance the learning process. However, multimedia and interactive content for e-books is not produced because it requires time, technical knowledge and specific tools. Within the current publishing system, authors are expected to produce and design all the content for books on their own, but because of the extreme content diversity, it is unrealistic to expect that they really possess such knowledge and skills. Better collaboration among authors, publishers, distributors, the professional community and the related industry is necessary for knowledge digitization to function.