Skip to main content

From the Visual Book to the WEB Book: The Importance of Good Design

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL 2000)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1923))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

This paper presents the results of two studies into electronic book production. The Visual Book study [1] explored the importance of the visual component of the book metaphor for the production of more effective electronic books, while the WEB Book study [2] took the findings of the Visual Book and applied them to the production of books for publication on the WWW. Both studies started from an assessment of which kinds of paper book are more suitable for conversion into electronic form, and both identified as target publications those which are meant to be used for reference rather than those which are read sequentially and usually in their entirety by users. This includes scientific publications and textbooks which have been chosen for the Visual Book and the WEB Book experiments. In this paper we discuss the results of the two studies and the way they could influence the design and production of more effective electronic books.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Landoni, M.: The Visual Book system: A study of the use of visual rhetoric in the design of electronic books. Glasgow: Department of Information Science of the University of Strathclyde (PhD Thesis). (1997).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Wilson, R.: The importance of appearance in the design of WEB books. Glasgow: Department of Information Science of the University of Strathclyde (MSc Diss.) (1999).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Barker, P.: Interactive Electronic Books. Interactive Multimedia, 2(1) (1991) 11–28.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Barker, P.: Living books and dynamic electronic libraries. The Electronic Library, 14(6) (1996) 491–501.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Barker, P., Richardson, S. and Benest, I.D.: Human-computer interface design for electronic books. In: Raitt, D.I. and Jeapes, B. (eds.). Proceedings of the Online Information 94, 16th International Online Information Meeting, London 6-8 December. Oxford: Learned Information (1994) 213–292.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Benest, I.D., Morgan G., and Smithurst M.D.: A humanised interface to an electronic library. In: Bullinger, H. J. and Shackel, B. (eds.): Proceedings of INTERACT’87. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science (1987) 905–910.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Wilson, T.: Electronic publishing and the future of the book. Presented at the International Conference on Book Science, Vilnius University, Lithuania. (1997). Available at: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~is/publications/infres/paper39.html (Last visited 1/7/99).

  8. Landoni M., Crestani F. and Melucci M.: The Visual Book and the Hyper-TextBook: Two Electronic Books One Lesson?. In: Proceedings of RIAO’2000 Conference on Contentbased Multimedia Information Access, Paris, April 12-14. Paris: C.I.D. (2000) 247–265.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Leaver, R.: The future of electronic publishing for book publishers within Britain. Aslib proceedings. 47 (7/8). July/August. (1995) 164.

    Google Scholar 

  10. 10.Pope, B. K.: How to succeed in online market-National Academy Press: A Case Study. The Journal of Electronic Publishing. June. 4(4) (1999). Available at: URL http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/04-04/pope.html.

  11. 11.Catenazzi, N., Landoni, M. and Gibb, F.: Design issues in the production of hyper-books and visual-books. Alt-J Association for Learning Technology Journal 1(2) (1993) 40–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. 12.Morkes, J. and Nielsen, J.: Concise, SCANNABLE, and objective: how to write for the Web. Available: URL http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html (Last visited 11/6/99) (1997).

  13. Morkes, J. and Nielsen, J.: Applying writing guidelines to Web pages. Available: URL http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/rewriting.html (Last visited 11/6/99) (1998).

  14. Landoni M. and Gibb F.: The Importance of Visual Rhetoric in the Design and Production of Electronic Books: The Visual Book Experience. The Electronic Library. In press. (2000).

    Google Scholar 

  15. Southall, R.: Interfaces between the designer and the document. In: And’e, J., Furuta, R. and Quint, V. (eds.). Structured documents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1989) 119–131.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Landoni, M., Catenazzi, N. and Gibb, F.: Hyper-books and visual-books in an electronic library. The Electronic Library, 11(3) (1993) 175–186.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Catenazzi, N. and Gibb F.: The publishing process: the hyper-book approach. Journal on Information Science. 21(3) (1995) 161–172.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Hansen, W.J. and Haas, C.: Reading and writing with computers: a framework for explaining differences in performance. Communication of ACM, 37(9) (1988) 1080–1089.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Egan, D.E., Lesk, M. E., Ketchum, R. D., Lochbaum, C. C., Remde, J. R., Littman, M., and Landauer T. K.: Hypertext for the Electronic Library? CORE Sample Results. In: Proceedings of Hypertext’ 91, San Antonio. New York: ACM Press (1991) 299–312.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Rothkopf, E. Z.: Incidental Memory for location of information in text. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 10(6), (1971) 608–613.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Catenazzi, N.: A Study into electronic book design and production: Hyper-Book and Hyper-Book Builder. Glasgow: Department of Information Science of the University of Strathclyde (PhD Thesis) (1994).

    Google Scholar 

  22. Rowley, D. E. and Rhoades, D. G.: The cognitive jog-through: a fast-paced user interface evaluation procedure. In: Proceedings of CHI’92 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Monterey, May 3–7. New York: ACM Press (1992) 389–395.

    Google Scholar 

  23. van Rijsbergen, C.J.: Information retrieval. 2nd Edition, London: Butterworths (1979). Available at: URL http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/Keith. (Last visited 30/9/99).

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  24. Crestani, F. and Melucci, M.: A case study of automatic authoring: from a textbook to a hyper-textbook. Data and Knowledge Engineering. 27(1) (1998) 1–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Landoni, M., Wilson, R., Gibb, F. (2000). From the Visual Book to the WEB Book: The Importance of Good Design. In: Borbinha, J., Baker, T. (eds) Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries. ECDL 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1923. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45268-0_28

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45268-0_28

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-41023-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45268-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics