読むためのデバイスとしての電子書籍端末の評価

摘要

Electronic book readers (including general-purpose tablet PCs) have recently become popular. This paper introduces the results of a series of experiments conducted to evaluate the readability of documents by electronic reading devices. This evaluation compared the reading performance (e.g., speed, understanding, error detection rate in proofreading) of electronic reading devices with that of paper documents. In reading for pleasure, the operability of turning pages on electronic reading devices is inferior to that of paper documents. However, this does not interfere with reading for pleasure. In reading at work (e.g., cross-reference reading, reading to answer questions, proofreading), it is more efficient to use paper documents than electronic reading devices. Based on these findings, this paper discusses whether electronic reading devices could possibly replace paper documents in the future.%これまでオフイスのペーパーレス化が何度となく叫ばれてきた.しかし，いずれも単なる神話にすぎなかった.Sellenらの見解によれば，ペーパーレスオフイスの第1の波はパーソナルコンピュータ(PC)の登場であり，第2の波はインターネットの普及とPCの大衆化である.確かに，これらの技術は電子文書の量を大幅に増加させた.そして，人は文書の検索や閲覧に電子的手段を利用するようになった.しかし，文書を読み込む際には依然として紙を好んだ.