I've been surprised by the extent to which some people seem unable to think of ebooks as
books. They can't shake off the notion that they're simply an electronic version of a
real (i.e. printed on paper) book, and that the only way to cite material found in an ebook is to somehow be able to refer back to the pages on which the material can be found in the print version.
There appear to be two assumptions underlying this constant call for page numbers to be provided in ebooks for use in academic citations:
(a) That a citation is only valid if it refers back to a book that is printed on paper.
(b) That a citation which refers to a particular ebook edition accessed on a specific e-reader is somehow invalid, because one would have to have the same ebook edition (and possibly the same e-reader) to pinpoint it exactly from the citation.
With regard to (a), I'd have to ask "why?". Citations referencing material found online and in other electronic resources have been acceptable for years now, in all of the main referencing "styles" (Chicago, APA, etc). Ebooks are simply another electronic resource that is becoming available for disseminating and accessing information. Many universities already include "references to material in ebooks" in their guidance to students and staff on how to cite different types of material, and the official APA Style Blog contains an article discussing how to cite ebook material that was written over a year ago (
http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/20...-a-kindle.html). They make no mention of having to refer back to printed edition page numbers when citing from an ebook - rather, they suggest "chapter/section/paragraph number" style citations.
Perhaps what we need is for e-reader devices and applications to provide a "citation" feature where you highlight some text, and the e-reader attaches a note to that text listing the author(s), title, chapter heading (and sub-headings if there are any) plus paragraph number. That would be one way of standardising the citation of ebook material.
As for (b), I'd point out that, if you provide a reference to material from the 1st edition of a work, the citation isn't invalid because it doesn't also provide additional references to the presence and location of the same material in the 2nd edition, or the abridged version, etc. The fact that someone would have to locate a copy of the 1st edition if they wanted to double check the accuracy of the citation, and couldn't do so by checking their 3rd edition (revised and expanded, with additional illustrations), doesn't make the reference any less valid or acceptable. The same principle should surely apply to ebook editions?
The purpose of a citation is to identify the work referenced, the edition that was consulted, and, as accurately as possible, the location in that work where the referenced material can be found. That can all be done quite accurately for material contained in an ebook (whether it's by referring to paragraph numbers, or Kindle locations, or whatever other "location identifiers" are provided by specific e-readers and e-reader applications), without having to finesse some sort of "back-reference" to an identical print edition.