Conferences

Book Now

There was a strong Scottish Centre for the Book (SCOB) presence at the Seventh International Conference on the Book held at Edinburgh University in October. Lorraine Fannin and Alistair McCleery were both plenary speakers, while Avril Gray, Derek Allan, Melanie Ramdarshan Bold, and (jointly) Padmini Ray Murray and Daniel Boswell gave sessional papers. Given the conference was in our own backyard, it also represented a significant opportunity to showcase the work of SCOB to colleagues drawn from across the globe. www.napier.ac.uk/scob

e-Book Now

Sarah Bromage attended the e-book conference organized by CILIPS at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. She was supported on the SCOB stand by Barry Begg, one of our publishing students. Conference delegates were particularly interested in Derek Allan’s work (with Phyllis Laybourne) on e-book readers. The research carried out at the Scottish Centre for the Book involved a group of volunteers aged mainly under-25 using the first Sony e-book. Subjects kept a diary and provided evaluative reports on their use of the readers. They made comparisons with their previous reading practices and read the same books in both print and digitised versions. This research was among the first of its kind and has informed an ongoing assessment of the value and future of e-book readers from a user perspective, particularly from a group of intensive readers of a generation familiar with a range of screen-based devices and functions.