Article on e-Books From The RAND Corp.

The RAND Corporation, founded in 1948, is one of the most well-known think tanks in the world. It's title comes from Research AND Development. According to Wikipedia, more than thirty Nobel Prize winners have been affiliated with the RAND Corporation over the years.

The think tank introduces itself this way:

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world.

The RAND Corporation recently released a copy of one of its journal articles titled "Innovation and the Future of e-Books" by John W. Warren.

According to RAND's staff bio:

John W. Warren is Director of Marketing, Publications, at the RAND Corporation . . . John has nearly two decades of experience in the publishing industry, with special focus on marketing and digital publishing.

Here is an excerpt from the abstract for the journal article:

This paper examines three examples of innovative e-books in order to illustrate the potential and pitfalls of electronic publications. The first is a history e-text that includes 1,700 primary-source documents—such as Presidential memos, reports, and even audio and video clips—linked from footnotes, providing a treasure trove of research material to readers. The second is a novella in hypertext form. The third example examines digital textbooks that include multimedia, assessment, and other digital tools. Each of these cases demonstrates creative approaches, business models, and methods of review that point to the enhanced, interactive, interlinked future of the e-book.

Read the entire article here.