FINAL REPORT

Books versus eBooks: The change of the reading approach autors Marco Genovese Alberto Bagarello Francesca Bin

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INDEX Introduction ................................................................................ p. 3 Rationale & Design .................................................................... p. 5 Main results ................................................................................ p. 7 Other results ............................................................................... p. 12 Conclusions ................................................................................ p. 14 Appendix ..................................................................................... p. 15

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INTRODUCTION The last global revolutionary change of books dates back to 1456 when the printing machine was invented by Gutenberg. Before the coming of the printing, books were not products at everybody's disposal but they began to spread all over Europe setting the bases for the creation of a new type of market: the market of publishing. During the following centuries this market favoured the born of different applications of the printing, for example giving birth to the newspapers. But until the XX century nothing has changed in the approach to reading. In the early 80's, when computers and digital technology began to be really important tools for research of every kind, the idea that printed books could be converted in a virtual version started to be taken into consideration. It seems to be a not so relevant change from the point of view of reading itself because the method is still the same; but in terms of tools, the approach to reading evolved. The books are available in a digital format and an eReader is needed to read these files. We can consider the eReader like the cover of a book, and the eBooks files like the pages of the