A System for Social Reading based on EPUB3

Abstract

This paper proposes a system for social reading based on EPUB3, a standardized format for EPUB publications. The system is to collect and manage reading-related information, such as EPUB publications' metadata, bookmarks, and annotations, as well as users' behavioral information, such as the time and the location at which the users read the e-books, the timing when they turned the pages, etc. The system not only allows the users to share the reading-related information with each other, but also enables them to extract useful information out of the stored data. We present an overview of the proposed social reading system based on EPUB3, followed by the prototype implementation using Readium, a reference implementation of EPUB3 reader.