Book Page Numbers

[desertblues]

Originally Posted by Busirane

I was recently reading Matthew Arnold's "Culture and Anarchy" on my K2, and it has physical page numbers corresponding to a specific print edition. They are embedded as [N] in the text; at first I took them for end notes, but once I realized they were page numbers, they became fairly unobtrusive. Here's an example of what I'm talking about: One screen on the Kindle might show

"This is some text on page 123 of a specific print edition. blah blah blah blah blah. This is the last text on that page [124] and this is the first text on page 124 of the specific print edition. blah blah blah."

Of course, the actual text was a lot more boring than "blah blah blah"!

That could work for citations, I think, provided it is marked from which book edition these page numbers are.

[whitearrow]

Originally Posted by Busirane

I was recently reading Matthew Arnold's "Culture and Anarchy" on my K2, and it has physical page numbers corresponding to a specific print edition. They are embedded as [N] in the text; at first I took them for end notes, but once I realized they were page numbers, they became fairly unobtrusive.

Those of us in the legal profession have been dealing with this for decades now, since the advent of Lexis and Westlaw and rules that still require citation to print books.

It might be "unobtrusive" with one page number, but wait until there are multiple editions. For US Supreme Court decisions, there are three paper editions, each denoted by a * before the page number. It is anything but unobtrusive.

And of course the services providing the book-to-electronic conversions are very expensive. Considering how much trouble we often have getting simple, decent formatting out of book publishers, what makes you think that we could get this additional service that requires hours and hours of hand-coding without the books tripling in price?

The solution is for the old stodgy institutions to adapt. That includes academic libraries buying Kindle editions the same way that law libraries buy Lexis, Westlaw and other licenses for electronic format books. Then a Kindle cite would be no more hard to find than any other cite (and might even be easier because it could be looked up on a computer instead of requiring a trip to a library).

[DMSmillie]

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.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DMSmillie

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.

The purpose is also that the citation should work after e.g. 20 years. And I do not believe that any ebook system for position will be the same in 20 years.

[wdreamsmaycome]

Originally Posted by tomsem

People who want page numbers want them for a variety of reasons (some more reasonable than others), and these requirements are in some conflict with each other.

from my perspective the main hassle with page numbers is when a book references itself (very common in some material) and says things like 'see the note on page xyz for more info on this' or 'see page yyy for an example' etc.

I think that either these 'see page xyz' should be dynamically recalculated (would be more difficult to do) or there should be a way to say 'send me approximately to page xyz of the print edition of the book' which wouldn't be very hard to do since Amazon would know how many pages the pbook had, so you could do a % based guess of where you should be

For reading fiction I agree page numbers are fairly useless, but some books cross-reference themselves a lot in a way that makes them difficult to follow on a kindle.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by wdreamsmaycome

from my perspective the main hassle with page numbers is when a book references itself (very common in some material) and says things like 'see the note on page xyz for more info on this' or 'see page yyy for an example' etc.

I think that either these 'see page xyz' should be dynamically recalculated (would be more difficult to do) or there should be a way to say 'send me approximately to page xyz of the print edition of the book' which wouldn't be very hard to do since Amazon would know how many pages the pbook had, so you could do a % based guess of where you should be

Surely in an ebook, internal cross references should simply be implemented as hyperlinks, shouldn't they? Why would one need to use a page number at all for such a purpose?

[ivanjt]

Surely in an ebook, internal cross references should simply be implemented as hyperlinks, shouldn't they? Why would one need to use a page number at all for such a purpose?

Simple case - a scanned PDF that has internal references to other pages. I have a lot of reference books that do that and at the moment I have to hand write a cross ref sheet to match the page number to the kindle location number.

DMSmillie, another reason for citations to refer back to paper based book pages is that different e-readers will give different references for the same location and that reference could also change with font size.

[FF2]

Originally Posted by ivanjt

Simple case - a scanned PDF that has internal references to other pages. I have a lot of reference books that do that and at the moment I have to hand write a cross ref sheet to match the page number to the kindle location number.

DMSmillie, another reason for citations to refer back to paper based book pages is that different e-readers will give different references for the same location and that reference could also change with font size.

That observation actually holds true for Adobe's own reader. I have a large number of manuals and the page number the reader shows rarely corresponds with the page number at the top or bottom of a pdf "printed" page. The extraneous white pages and or cover pages or opening "focus" page all count in the reader so when the manual says See Page xx, rarely if I enter xx in the reader's jump-to-page will it be the correct page.

Still real page numbers could be useful for those who want them.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by DMSmillie

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.

This will lead to vast numbers of citation errors. A boatload of otherwise good non-fiction authors do not have the clerical ability to accurately count sections within paragraphs and paragraphs within sections.

It is going to take some time and thinking to get this right. But I would suggest that there might be a different system for older and new works. As a wild suggestion, maybe some international commission should decree that everything published before 2020 or so will be cited by page numbers, and everything after by something akin to the kindle location number. Going forward, all paper books that want Berne Convention protection would have to include location numbers, and all eBook devices that hope to be purchased by students and scholars would have to reference paper page numbers for pre-2020 origin material.

I realize this doesn't address books that go through multiple editions, but the vast majority of works are only published once.

[JSWolf]

If you find the Kindle is lacking in features you need/want then return it for a reader that has the featured you want/need. It's that simple. Whining about them is not going to help. The K3 is never going to have page numbers. Get over it.

[OtterBooks]

I found it odd at first but now I like the % system. It's almost fun watching the number grow to 100%. Even if it had an option for page numbers I would stick with percentage. I don't use the K3 for academic or legal work, though, nor do I take part in book club discussions.

[wdreamsmaycome]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Surely in an ebook, internal cross references should simply be implemented as hyperlinks, shouldn't they? Why would one need to use a page number at all for such a purpose?

I agree, but that's not the case in several books sold by amazon as far as I can see... especially in cookbooks you often get 'see page xxx for how to cook yyy this way', one can usually figure it out by doing a word search, but it'd be nicer if there was a way to approximately figure out where to go or have a hyperlink.

[DMSmillie]

Unfortunately a lot of books which were previously available in print are simply autoconverted to ebook format, without any thought for things like internal references to page numbers. A "proper" conversion to ebook format would include replacing these references with hyperlinks to the referenced point in the book, and its a shame that publishers don't appear to have sufficient respect for those paying for ebooks to expend any time or resource on tidying up that kind of thing when converting their print books.

[ChrisDare]

From the discussion it is not clear why Amazon cannot simply have the page numbers inserted in the text for purposes of citation. It would not matter that the page number from the original text will not map onto the page on the screen because of variations in font size that the reader uses. This way, Kindle Books could br used in academic work.

[susan_cassidy]

This is an ancient thread. Amazon enabled a way to have the hard-copy page numbers available. Not all books have them yet, and it only works on the most recent firmware.