If it looks like a book, reads like a book, surely it must be a book, right?

Inky fingers may soon be a thing of the past.

Some researchers picture a day when every body carries lightweight electronic viewers instead of newspapers, paperbacks and even textbooks. Students could buy the class materials they need in ?memory-card? formats that the viewers read, much like compact-disk players read CDs. Or they could download written material directly from the Internet.

Several institutions, including Kent State University?s Liquid Crystal Institute (LCI) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology?s Media Lab, are developing various types of these electronic devices.

Roger Fidler, a Kent State adjunct professor of journalism and mass communication is working with LCI and several display manufacturers on an electronic tablet called the portable document viewer (PDV), which he hopes will be on the market within the next two years.

The Internet?s swift and sudden rise has hampered PDV?s transition from factory to store, says Fidler. But while the Internet has monopolized talk about publishing?s future, it hasn?t fixed the ergonomic problems of reading online.

PDVs, however, are portable. And unlike television and most computer screens, they proffer a screen that is taller than it is wide?the same reader-friendly portrait shape found in magazines and books. Their screens don?t have the glare of today?s computer screens and feature bolder text (akin to paper and ink).

Some publishers, however, fear that such electronic viewers would cost too much, and therefore wouldn?t generate enough profit. Book devotees balk at any technology that could replace the traditional paper and print they?ve enjoyed since childhood.

Fidler counters that the viewer?s expense will fall steadily.And, he says, the viewer is a book evolution, not a book replacement. ?Just like a book, PDV features the printed word in a portable, portrait format,? said Fidler. ?It?s just that it?s on electronic paper instead of the kind you crinkle.?

Roger Fidler?s new book is ?Mediamorphosis: Understanding New Media? (Pine Forge Press, 1997).

?Bridget Murray