eBook Readers for Scholars

There's been a bunch of discussion about some forthcoming ebook readers on Wide Scope, here, here, and here. I would like to get one of these things; sometimes I worry that I might miss the actual books and stuff, but then I think about how much I don't miss the shelves full of CDs that were replaced by my ipod, and how much I don't miss carrying CDs around, and how nice it is not to have to plan ahead and anticipate what my listening desires will be (particularly if I am traveling), and I realize that this will not be a problem.

But (apart from being broke) the dealbreaker for me is the apparent inability to support annotations for scholarly content. The capability to make annotations and marginal notes is critical. I'd say about 60% of the value of reading something is that I create a record of having read it which I can then store in my archives for future reference. Subsequent read-throughs are guided and informed by this record, and my thinking about the issues takes off from this starting point--the thinking I have already done. Until there is an ereader that allows me to write in the e-margins of my e-journal articles, I will be forced to keep printing them out and doing it the old-fashioned way.

--Mr. Zero.