TEBO: Tracking Electronic BOoks
2004. TEBO seeks to gather information about ebook usage implicitly, using tracking software. The potential of this non-invasive technique for observing user behaviour with ebooks is being explored, and its effectiveness as an evaluation method assessed.

eInfoC
This is an on-going project on the use of electronic content in higher institutions. As in any higher institution, Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) publishes books, research reports, lecture modules, theses and other information for academic purposes. However, all these publications are in printed and bound forms which pose some disadvantages. In addition, the publications have not been widely promoted and as a result their accessibility has been very limited. eInfoC proposes an inclusive and comprehensive model (together with guidelines), comprising three aspects: the e-publishing process; electronic marketing strategies; and electronic bookstore features. The model will be tested by building a web-based electronic information centre which promotes and markets UUM’s owned publications such as electronic books, electronic research reports, electronic research proposals, electronic lecture modules, electronic lecture notes, and electronic magazines.

ICDL: Digital Collection of Malaysian Narratives for the International Children’s Digital Library
ICDL is a research project funded by the USA National Science Foundation. The primary goal is to study how children relate to digital material. Currently, the library is showcasing around 300 ebooks from around the world, with an additional 600 about to be posted. These ebooks represent over 26 different languages. The library was launch in November 2002 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. ICDL works with many partners in many countries, and in Malaysia this project is headed by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Norshuhada. The main aims of the project in Malaysia are to contribute to the digital collection of ICDL and collaborate with the Internet Archive (www.archive.org) to promote Malaysian narratives worldwide through the ICDL library.

Webkit: Intuitive Physical Interfaces to the WWW
2002-2004. WebKit was a European Commission IST RTD project which aimed to create an intuitive physical interface to information and multimedia content on the web, which would enhance the learning process for children. It attempted to break away from the standard interface of the mouse and keyboard and re-embody many tasks that these peripherals have replaced.

Promoting the Uptake of E-Books in Further and Higher Education
2003. Monica Landoni acted as Librarian Adviser on this project, funded under the JISC DNER. It provided a better understanding of how ebooks are being used in higher education, and its findings will be added and compared to our usability studies.

EBONI: Electronic Books ON-screen Interface
2000-2002. EBONI was funded under the JISC DNER Programme for Learning and Teaching, and developed a set of guidelines for designing electronic textbooks, based on the results of extensive evaluations involving students and lecturers from a range of disciplines and backgrounds. The guidelines, and details of the project's evaluations, are available from the project Web site.

EboChi: Ebooks for Children
2000-2003. EboChi was a project dedicated to the development of technology-based teaching and learning material for children. The main aim was to identify the features of children's electronic books which will overcome the limitations of paper textbooks. At the same time, this project also developed an electronic book model (called as InterActivity Book) which tries to cater and nurture children's intelligences.

1999. The WEB Book experiment studied whether focusing on the appearance of the content when preparing a scientific textbook for electronic publication on the Internet has a positive impact on its usability. The emphasis was on making the text "scannable", and measuring the effect this has on usability. A user evaluation found the scannable text to be 92% more usable than the original, flat version.

1997. The Visual Book study translated the paper book metaphor into electronic terms by focusing on the appearance of books, their size, quality and design, as well as the way in which people interact with them. The user was placed at the centre of the design process, to determine which paper book features were more familiar and useful to the reader and to reproduce them in an electronic environment. From this study a model for the Visual Book was extracted and the metaphor was applied to scientific publications . As predicted, users felt familiar with the representation of the book on screen and were able to rely on their experience with paper books to interact with the electronic book.

JAIMS
JAIMS is an environment to support the submission of academic articles for publication in the Journal of Advancing Information and Management Studies. It is a collaborative electronic journal between the Faculty of IT, UUM, Department of Computer & Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde and Department of Management Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Articles are welcome in most areas of ICT and management.

Department of Computer & Information Sciences
University of Strathclyde    Livingstone Tower    26 Richmond Street
Glasgow, G1 1XH