Towards an Electronic Book Ontology: Nature and Properties

Abstract

The definition of the book and that of reading has been subject throughout history to dichotomies that oppose the object and the discourse contained in it, the author and the reader, intensive and extensive reading. With the e-book, however, this tension has come to question its essence as a “book”, within a binary logic according to which digital, because of its intangibility, cannot be used to describe an object that should only designate a physical support for writing. The aim of this article is to offer an analysis of the nature of the electronic book by establishing its own characteristics which give it a differentiated entity with respect to a mere digital text. In order to achieve this, it has been carried out a review of the literature
that presents some of the main definitions of the electronic book and that serves as the basis for the elaboration of a definition that includes the elements that assimilate it to the printed book and those others that endow it with an entity of its own. The latter are developed throughout this research as attributes integrated within a system that is inherent to the electronic book and allows offering a global vision of it.