The Phenomenon of the E-book in Russian Bibliology: Problems of Interpretation and Terminology

The article addresses the problem of distinguishing between the concepts of “electronic book,” “digital book,” and related terms in bibliology. It is predominantly historiographical in nature and presents an analysis of the concepts of Russian book scholars. Book industry practice and numerous scholarly publications indicate that the electronic book today is not a single object but an entire class of objects of varying natures and modes of existence in the digital environment. Attempts to classify and name them are highly varied and often lack logic and consistency. An analysis of existing works in Russian scholarly discourse demonstrates the high relevance of terminological and substantive issues related to the concepts of “electronic book”, “digital book”, and “multimedia publication” as well as the wide range of interpretations of these concepts. It would be premature to summarize the ongoing discussions in the press, but some preliminary conclusions are offered. In addition, a variant of understanding the terminological system is proposed for discussion, which fits the described objects into the terms “electronic book”, “electronic text” and “digital publication”.