Recently, I purchased an e-book reader, ‘kindle’ made by Amazon. Of course, there are various e-book readers made by big name companies such as Apple and Sony in the present market and the market is rapidly growing. Even the good-old classic publishers are rushing to embrace the new technology. Not only the e-book reader market, but also the revenue of electronic book market is skyrocketing. It is not surprising now to hear that the Amazon e-book sale already eclipsed traditional paperbacks in the last year. Yes, the world is changing.
Having been overwhelmed by huge possibility of the novel technology, I have definitely become a fan of the e-book. However, the e-book ecosystem does not seem to be perfect yet. Not even close. There is no universal e-book format. Many formats still compete with each other. Some formats are specifically created only for e-books while others such as text and HTML are good for any reading device, even for PC. What’s more, there may be a copyright issue as in the case of music players. Having one step more in the e-book access due to the copyright security can be a minus because a kind of DRM (Digital Rights Management) sounds equivalent to being cumbersome for some people. Some of you will be disappointed as well if you are encountered with complex legal rules concerning a regional restriction, probably similar restrictive ecosystem of iTunes. Some contents are not downloadable for people living outside the US whereas some are not accessible outside Korea. Although the e-book ecosystem is still in a developing phase, it is obviously just a matter of time to have an easy-to-use nearly perfect ecosystem.
Very recently, a big step forward has been made in the e-book ecosystem particularly in education sector.  Apple is in the news for offering a new textbook authoring system, and this time, for everyone. They announced the iBooks platform for writing, selling, and distributing e-books to Apple devices. The effort has been praised from many parts of the Internet world. And the most is from the education sector. Textbooks are positioned at the very core in most education systems because textbooks are the primary teaching medium for most students from the last century and probably even till now. The e-book evolution of textbooks implies several important aspects. One of most important aspects is the price point. The e-book university textbook can be published at a much lower cost. Demand for used textbooks, which you can easily find in the bulletin board in the early semester, can be replaced, for instance, by e-book textbook rental. This is a revolution in education and a bless for the university education. CBNU as one of the flagship national universities in Korea should do an active adaptation of the new e-book textbook era, thereby providing a state-of-the-art education environment in advance. This is not about a state-of-the-art hardware building but all about changing our mindset a little bit earlier.