Kindle won't catch fire in law schools

A late rejoinder to the discussion about ebooks and casebooks (Tech Law Prof Blog, Law Librarian Blog, two previous LSI posts): I don't think Kindle will replace paper casebooks in the near-term because it's less functional than a paper book for study purposes without adding obvious digital/network features for study purposes. I emphasize "study purposes" because students are not romance novel readers, and the Kindle targets the latter:

• The size of the screen is still much, much smaller than an open textbook.
• Thumb-typing annotation off-screen is nothing like margin scribbling. And not in a good way, either. (Heck, even writing directly onto a Tablet PC is nothing like scribbling on paper).
• Multi-color highlighting?

Now, lighter weight is a significant feature (after all, I personally chose a 3.1lb tablet PC over larger, heavier, cheaper alternatives), but I would want more for my $400, even if I could get all of my casebooks on it for, say, $20 each (which I can't imagine the publishers offering). And that's because Amazon is trying to make books work like mp3s, not like blogs or wikis.

Casebooks exist in a social ecosystem of study groups, hornbooks, and inherited outlines. What students really need to do with casebooks -- after reading them, of course (!) -- is to rip /mix /burn them into streamlined study aids. Oh, and then share those with each other. While that's not necessarily incompatible with DRM, locking down the texts sure makes it a heck of a lot harder to do. (Witness the Zune, which, without DRM, would be a much better model for law school ebook hardware than the iPod).

There's one product that I think gets it in terms of the real potential value of ebooks in law schools, and that's Aspen's Studydesk. Though, of course, the problem remains DRM and its inherent conflict with sharing among peers. But it does get the idea that in law schools the casebook is only a means to an end (learning and getting good grades) rather than end in itself.

(I do, btw, think that Kindle has potential as a Toilet Browser, depending on how well it handles news sites and RSS feeds. So if someone wants to send over a stocking stuffer... ;)

Gene Koo