If you walk into a book shop, you can buy a book and take it home and read it.  You can also loan it to a friend should you want to.  You can read your book in bed, on the couch in the lounge, at a desk, on the train, at work (in your lunch hour of course), or on a plane.  You can read a book anywhere.

How is this relevant?  Simple.  Now that books are electronic you actually lose some of this functionality in order gain other functionality. 

In this post we will examine some of the benefits of electronic books and compare these to normal books.  We will also look at some of the limitations in the next Q&A post.

One of the key benefits of electronic books and libraries is just the time spent flicking through pages.  If you want to find a passage in the bible, just type it in.  If you want to search for all the occurrences of the phrase "Lamb of God", just type it in and viola - there they are.  This basic functionality is something a computer can do much more exhaustively and efficiently than a human with a book. 

What other advantages are there?  We asked our four Bible Software Companies:

Question: What distinct advantages do you see Bible Software having over using regular books and paper beyond just time?

Olive Tree:

1) Portability. You can take a library of resources with you on your laptop or mobile device.

2) Space. You no longer have to have a huge library of books – they can all be stored digitally on your computer or mobile device.

3) Ease. The tools available with Bible Software give you a way to study the Bible in an in-depth way, but much easier and more powerful than spreading your books out on the table.

4) Search. Quickly find what you want in any book.

Laridian:

In some cases, Bible software is actually less advantageous than books. Books are high resolution, portable, and require no power. They are more impervious to peril of most types. Books have a well-known, intuitive user interface that does not vary from book to book. 

Searching is easier with an electronic book. It is also more powerful. So while a concordance can show me everywhere in the Bible a particular word occurs, PocketBible can show you occurrences of combinations of words and phrases. It's also easier to find and read Bible verses that are cited in a reference book. Our desktop software, for example, shows you the text of any link without you actually having to go there. Just hover the mouse over the link.

An electronic book can be non-destructively marked up. You can highlight your Bible for one purpose, then throw those highlights away and start over using another highlighting scheme. If you do that with a paper Bible you have to get a new Bible every time you start over.

eSword

The ability to search volumes of content in seconds is probably the single biggest gain the computer has brought to Bible study.

Logos

Bible software is a time machine. Electronic books are easier to search and hyperlinks make it simple to follow footnotes and cross references. Our users consistently tell us that Logos Bible Software gives them more time to dig deeper into the Word, and to get more out of the study.