[Porject] A Study on Reading Electronic Document in Digital Environment

Project No.：NSC 90-2413-H-002-010
Period：2001.7-2002.7

Project Introduction

This study explores the e-reading behaviors on Internet, useing a qualitative approach. 24 faculy members from 5 universities and 20 college students selected from BBS users were interviewed in depth.

The result shows that the nature of reading is not changed by the technology but the convenience of Internet technology entails more information sharing and reading activities than before.


Relevent Papers

Chang, Shan-Ju L. (2003). An exploratory study on e-reading behaviors of academic faculty. Journal of Library and Information Studies, 1(1), 75-92.
Abstract
This paper reports an investigation on the e-reading activities of academic faculy members on the Internet. The empirical data were collected via in-depth interview with 24 individual members from 5 universities in North Taiwan and were analyzed using grounded theory approach. The author explores and discusses the findings based on the major themes of e-reading activities among the faculty under study, including the diverse reading situations, multiple sources of reading materials, five incluential factors of e-readings, and more positive impacts of e-reading.

Overall, the faculty members' e-reading activities are mostly task oriented and are influenced by a small set of factors. The paper concludes that the nature and motivation of reading are not changed much in the digital environment, but the source of reading materials is more diversified. Some technology-enabling reading activities do happen such as "forwarding" emails, and so do the after-reading information processing behaviors.

Keywords:Reading Research, Information Behaviors, Digital Environment, Internet, E-reading, WWW(World Wide Web)