1. Purpose - This study, a part of JISC-funded UK National E-Books Observatory, aims to find out about the perspective of
students and academics, the main e-book users, on e-books. Design/methodology/approach - The paper provides an analysis
of two open-ended questions about e-books, contained in a UK national survey conducted between 18 January and 1 March
2008. The survey obtained a response from more than 20,000 academic staff and students; 16,000 free-text responses were
obtained to these two questions. Findings - The study discloses that convenience associated with online access along with
searchability was the biggest advantage of e-books. The study shows a potential market for e-textbooks; however, e-books
have yet to become more student-friendly by improving features such as printing and screenreading. Originality/value - This is
the biggest survey of its kind ever conducted and it improves one's knowledge of what the academic community thinks of e-
books.
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Introduction
During the last decade libraries together with publishers have made a successful move towards the provision of journals and
databases in online format. The next information resource that is destined to be part of this digital transition would appear to be
academic books. Although the move towards e-books in academic libraries seems to be very challenging, the prospect looks
bright. E-book publishing has been growing rapidly and the International Digital Publishing Forum ([3] Industry eBook Sales
Statistics, 2005) reports a 23 per cent increase in e-book revenues in 2005 compared to 2004 and a 20 per cent increase in e-
book titles published year-on-year. More libraries are also adding e-books to their collections. These are all signs of progress on
the supply side. But what do we know about the demand side? What is the perspective of students and academics, the main e-
book users, on e-books? In order to gain a deep understanding of the prospect of e-books usage in the higher education sector,
JISC funded the UK National E-Books Observatory.
Project background
The JISC National E-Books Observatory project (www.jiscebooksproject.org/) is a ground-breaking project in which over 120 UK
universities receive two years free access to course reading materials in e-book form to support students studying in Business
and Management, Medicine, Media Studies and Engineering. The purpose of the Observatory was to license e-core reading
books relevant to the UK higher education taught course students in the four mentioned disciplines, observe behaviours and
develop new models to stimulate the e-books market. Publishers were paid £600,000 for 36 textbooks for a period of two years.
The books were supplied on two platforms: Wolters Kluwer Health and MyiLibrary. The impact of "free at the point of use" e-
books on publishers, aggregators and libraries would then be assessed employing a mixture of deep log analysis,
questionnaires and interviews. The knowledge obtained would then be transferred to stakeholders to help stimulate an e-books
market. This paper assists in this transfer by providing an evaluation based on a questionnaire, which we believe to be the
biggest ever conducted into e-books.
Related works
Although in terms of size and representativeness no survey study conducted comes close to the current study, there have been
a few studies that have polled different user communities in order to find out about their opinion of e-books. [2] Chu (2003)
reported on a survey conducted in a class she taught at the Palmer School of Library and Information Science. The study
showed "around the clock availability" and "searchability" to be the most favourable features of e-books and "being hard to read
and browse" or "need for special equipment" as reasons hindering the use of e-books. The results clearly could not be
generalized and do not give us a sense of how end-users perceive electronic books. This is because the survey was distributed
to only 27 students as potential users, all of them studying to be librarians. Another survey of 118 self-selected participants,
conducted as part of the California State University E-book Task Force in 2001, showed that the users were generally pleased
with netLibrary (an e-book platform), though 60 per cent said they preferred print ([4] Langston, 2003).
[1] Anuradha and Usha (2006) surveyed 101 staff and students (with a low response rate of 2.94 per cent) at the Indian Institute
of Science in 2004. The responses indicated that the students tended to use e-books more often than faculty members and staff.
Those who did use e-books mostly used reference and technical material. Another survey of all students, faculty and staff (with

2. a healthy 2,067 respondents this time, 30.1 per cent response rate) at the University of Denver in 2005 by [5] Levine-Clark
(2006) showed that e-books were used by about half of the campus community. However, most of these people used them only
occasionally. About 68 per cent of faculty, 57 per cent of undergraduates and 64 per cent of postgraduates used them
occasionally. Generally, of the 1,116 people responding to this question, 28 per cent used e-books once only, 62 per cent
thought that they used them occasionally, and 10 per cent believed that they used them frequently. When asked about how they
typically used e-books, of the 1,148 people saying they used e-books, 57 per cent read a chapter or article within a book, and 36
per cent read a single entry or a few pages within a book, but only 7 per cent read the entire book. The survey ([6] Levine-Clark,
2007) also revealed subject differences between users. For example, humanities scholars, compared to their peers in other
disciplines, were more aware of e-books and tended to discover e-books through catalogues. However, this greater awareness
did not translate to greater use and they used e-books almost at the same frequency as the other respondents said they did.
E-book provider eBrary conducted a "global" survey ([7] McKiel, 2007) in which 906 individuals representing about 300 higher
education institutions from 38 countries (but mainly the USA, the UK, Canada and New Zealand) took part. The aim of the
survey was mainly to measure faculty attitudes towards e-books. Among the important findings was that half of faculty said they
now preferred to use online resources, while just 18 per cent said they preferred print. Some 89 per cent of respondents used
"educational, government and professional" web sites for research, class preparation, or instruction, followed closely by e-
journals (86 per cent). Indeed e-journals tended to be thought of as a more appropriate resource for students than e-books. A
question was asked "How do you currently integrate the use of e-books into your courses?"; 372 people said they encouraged
students to use e-books as a viable resource, 319 did not; 250 said they used chapters/sections for course reading, 146 said
they put links in course management software; 83 said they required the reading of entire text. When asked "What do you feel
would make e-book usage more suitable for use in your area?" the top three answers were: greater breadth and depth of
collection; ability to download; and fewer restrictions on printing and copying. In the study summary, Allen McKiel wrote that "e-
books had a fairly poor showing" and they rank "down with personal and corporate web sites". This supports eBrary's librarian
survey, where 59 per cent of librarians said e-book usage was "fair to poor".
A survey of 1,818 staff and students at University College London ([9] Rowlands and Nicholas, 2008) as a forerunner of the
current survey showed that e-books clearly compare very unfavourably indeed with print titles for perceived ease of reading. The
benefits of e-books cluster around convenience: ease of making copies, perceived up-to-dateness, space-saving, and around
the clock availability. Hard copy is decisively favoured in terms of ease of reading. There was a big difference between men and
women in respect of features and functionality: men tended to rate these aspects much more highly.
Methodology
As part of the JISC observatory project, a nationwide benchmarking survey of students and staff of participating universities was
conducted. The online survey was designed and piloted by members of the CIBER team at University College London and
implemented using Survey Monkey (Professional version).
Information about the survey was distributed to our partners in higher education libraries and they made very considerable
efforts to market the survey to staff and students in their universities. Links to the live survey database were distributed via e-
mail, staff and student newsletters, via departmental secretaries and embedded in library web pages.
The survey ran between 18 January and 1 March 2008, over which period 22,437 full or partial responses were received, which
makes it by far the largest survey ever conducted on the subject. Data collection ceased when the target of 20,000 full
completions was reached. The fact that 89.1 per cent of our respondents managed to get to the end of a quite long and complex
questionnaire is a clear indication of the level of interest within the academy in e-books. We received responses from 123
universities before the questionnaire was switched off.
The results of the quantitative part of the survey were analyzed and published elsewhere ([8] Nicholas et al. , 2008); presented
here are the findings of two open-ended questions, which were included in the survey. The attraction of the free text analysis is
precisely that, respondents were free to express themselves and were not constrained or shoehorned by the questioner. While
the questionnaire was open to both staff and students the respondents to these two questions were almost wholly students. The
respondents of the survey provided large numbers of comments in reply to the following two questions:
(1) In your opinion, what were the biggest advantages that e-books offered compared with a printed book? (Please volunteer up
to three reasons). This elicited 11,624 responses. Although the question asked for three advantages, most of the respondents
mentioned just one. In total 11,763 advantages were mentioned.

3. The second question was more general and supplementary in tone; it was a catch-all question:
(2) Is there anything that you want to add regarding course texts, print or electronic, or about your university library? In total
4,809 comments were received to this question. Some of these comments related to advantages and benefits of e-books as
well.
The answers to these two questions form the basis of this article and were analyzed using the software QSR N6, a text-analysis
software package. Each response was coded using themes that were drawn from the answers.
Findings
Advantages of using e-books
This section presents the respondents' answers to the first question. It should be mentioned that due to the nature of the
answers (free-text comments) and the fact that the phrases and words used by respondents to describe the advantages could
be interpreted in more than one way there is some overlap between concepts.
Online access
Clearly the main attraction is that e-books are more accessible than print books, meaning that users can get at them wherever
they are and at whatever time they like. This reason accounts for more than 52 per cent of the advantages mentioned, and
about 55 per cent if we include the related category, convenience (Table I [Figure omitted. See Article Image.]).
The attractions of instant (and rapid) access were mentioned in about 1,380 of the comments that related to the attractions of
online access. Of the online access comments, 1,000 specifically cited the fact that e-books can be accessed from a distance
and that the user does not have to travel to the library in order to use them. Indeed, many respondents actually mentioned their
happiness at not needing to make a trip to the library for this purpose. Unsurprisingly, this feature was especially appreciated by
distance learners. About 500 comments were related to availability - 24/7 access to e-books. A few of the many comments
follow:
Can access from a remote location (North of Scotland).
E-books are convenient in that I can access them from my dormitory instead of having to go all the way to the library.
I am a distance learner and could only get the book online unless I travelled.
It's always available - if you have a web connection.
Searchability
The greater retrieval opportunities provided by e-books were the second most mentioned characteristic (13.2 per cent). This
rises to 15.4 per cent if we include navigation (see the following). Digitisation has created numerous search pathways through
books and this is appreciated. Even in the case of PDF files, the Ctrl+F feature was mentioned as a favourite feature for finding
relevant content. Some illustrative comments follow:
Could search within the text using key words.
Ease of finding information with search options.
Easy location of phrases and words via the "find" mechanism.
Cost

4. Cost was the only other advantage to reach double figures (10.8 per cent). All comments related to financial issues were put
under this category including those that related to e-books being free and cheaper. Clearly there is confusion here in the minds
of students of what constitutes free. Some illustrative comments follow:
A lot of the e-books are free of charge.
Cheaper than buying the book.
Didn't have to buy it.
Portability
Portable is not a word you would associate with e-books but quite a few (5.3 per cent) mentioned this quality. They were said to
be "lighter" than printed books and they did not have to be carried around. Here some students clearly have downloadable e-
books in the form of PDF in mind while none of the e-textbooks provided through the project were downloadable. Some
illustrative comments follow:
Easier to carry around - on ipod.
No weight.
Portability - I can take a lot of books on a single computer, memory card, external hard drive.
Portable, we do not have to carry big books from one place to another, useful for international students.
Other advantages
The only other advantages that attracted more than 0.5 per cent of comments (in ranked order) were:
Convenience . A category which overlaps with "online access". Those comments (2.9 per cent) that mentioned ease of use or
included the terms convenience, convenient and so on were put under this category. Those who used the word convenience but
then specified why (for example, because I do not have to leave home) were categorised under other relevant categories, like
online access.
Eco-friendly . Refers to the fact that they do not use paper (2.9 per cent). Again a possible surprising response and probably not
one contained in many closed questionnaires. Good to the environment since less paper used.
Storage . Unlike hard copy books, it was said that e-books do not take a lot of space on the shelves or on the desk (2.2 per
cent).
Easy to navigate . It is easier to navigate e-books, scan through them and browse them more quickly and easily. It is also easier
to locate specific sections in the book by following hyperlinks or menu pages that aid navigation, such as hyperlinked table of
contents (2.2 per cent). This, of course, is also related to searchability feature. Illustrative comments: It is easier to find the
relevant sections without having to keep flipping through pages. Ability to scan faster and with greater ease.
Multiple users . Simultaneous use, meaning students do not have to wait for the hardcopies to be returned by other students or
put up with short loans and the like (1.7 per cent).
Easy to locate. E-books are easier to locate and find in comparison to hard copy books for which students have to search in
catalogues and then on shelves (1.3 per cent).
Copy and paste . E-books enable users to copy and paste pieces of text, and images into their own documents, something we
know from past research students is appreciated (1.1 per cent).

5. Easy to read. Some - but not many - students even thought them easier to read (0.71 per cent).
Perhaps, as interesting, are the often-mentioned advantages that did not attract that much support. Thus readability obtained a
very small number of mentions (0.7 per cent); so too did wider choice (0.5 per cent), up to date-ness (0.2), better quality
graphics (0.2 per cent) and interactivity (0.2 per cent), although in regard to the latter not much interactivity was provided by the
two platforms.
Catch-all question
This question was really open-ended and gave everyone an opportunity to say anything they felt relevant to the survey. The
question was:
Is there anything that you want to add regarding course texts, print or electronic, or about your university library?
Normally such questions receive very little in the way of feedback but not in this case, nearly 5,000 people responded! Clearly e-
books are a hot issue and everyone wants their say. Inevitably, a considerable proportion of comments were not directly related
to e-books - comments were also made in regard to libraries (16.3 per cent) and the survey instrument itself (0.8 per cent). Table
II [Figure omitted. See Article Image.] provides the details.
Library practice and provision
The bulk of the comments here concerned:
- The demand for more course textbooks; there were many complaints about the unavailability of core textbooks:
Core books are never available. Libraries do not have enough of the core books in short loan.
- The need for more up-to-date editions of textbooks:
Many of the textbooks are very old, not up-to-date.
I have noticed that the majority of the engineering related textbooks contained in the library are very old some from 1976. I
would like to see more recent editions of these books.
There were also quite a few comments regarding student happiness with the library:
I am very satisfied with my university library!!
The rest of the comments concerned things such as lack of computers, bad lighting and students hiding books to ensure they
can get hold of them later.
General expressions in favour of e-books
Of the comments, 634 (13.2 per cent) were expressions in favour of e-books and these comments should be read together with
the comments given in the first open-ended question. Users expressed their preference and enthusiasm for e-books with
comments like:
Please, please, please: e-books are a lifesaver!
E-books are a godsend.
More e-books

6. Of the people who left comments 632 (13.1 per cent) wanted more e-books to be available. Many users asked for more e-books
to be available in their own subject area, where they felt there was not enough (or any) available:
Add more on mental health as this is the area I am studying.
It would be extremely helpful if all books were available as electronic-books.
There were two other communities that were vocal in asking for more e-books. First, there were those people who tended to
study remotely and could not travel to the library easily; they were distance learners, part-time students or people who simply
preferred not to go to the campus to read material (e.g., a mother who is a student). The following comment was illustrative:
My course is delivered through distance learning and would be so much harder without electronic resources.
The second community were disabled users (26 responses obtained) - people who experienced visual difficulties or had
problems with mobility:
As a student who has reading difficulties, being able to access online material has made assignments much easier to handle, as
there is no worries over returning books or having short loan times.
I would like to point out that e-books are a terrific resource for visually-impaired students in particular, especially bearing in mind
that university libraries supply almost no Braille or large print resources and relatively few audio resources.
However, it was pointed out that not all categories of health-impaired users benefited from e-books. Dyslexic users found it hard
to use e-books in their current form. They require some changes to be made in the visual and graphic settings of e-books
systems:
As I am dyslexic I find it difficult to read from the screen and often have to "print out". It would be helpful if the background was
not white or if it was then the text in a different colour than black, e.g. Mid-Blue. Many of my friends who aren't dyslexic have
said that they also find it a "nicer" read when the text is either blue or a different background shade is used.
I prefer books as I'm dyslexic and I find electronic versions hard to read; however, if you could set it up to change the
background colour that would help.
I have glaucoma and find prolonged reading from the screen difficult. I need to print off material and it is frustrating that I cannot
edit on screen and print at a suitable font size and layout or to omit pictures to save printing costs. Living in the Hebrides makes
me more dependent on E-resources.
Screen-reading
The biggest disadvantage by far was thought to be the difficulties of reading from the screen. About 366 (7.6 per cent)
respondents complained about the difficulty of screenreading. The following user complained about this but also proposed a
solution s/he personally has applied:
The only problem with e-books is that eyes can get very exhausted reading from a screen. I finally solved it adding a filter to my
normal glasses, which reduce brightness (my glasses are blue).
The problem with screen reading is not only that it leads to tired eyes; users also found it harder to concentrate and absorb the
information when they read
The problem with screen reading is not only that it leads to tired eyes; users also found it harder to concentrate and absorb the
information when they read from a screen:

7. The predominant reason I do not use e-books, is that I often find the information harder to absorb when read from a screen.
Also, reading from a screen for prolonged periods of time tends to cause migraines; therefore, longer texts (which are more or
less unavailable as it is) would be inaccessible to me. As an English student, this puts e-books at a huge disadvantage.
The problem with screen reading is also a main cause of subject-dependability of e-books (see the following).
Preference for printed books
There are many users who would prefer hard copies to e-books. About six per cent of the respondents stated that they preferred
hard copy books in normal situations. The following comment is an example of a print advocate:
In spite of the invaluable speed and convenience of research and access to material via the web and through e-books, there is
nothing more contemplative and absorbing than to sit down with a physical book - to flick through the pages; to instantly refer
back and forth; to wander across and down the page without distraction and in the comfort of your favourite places, whether at
home, at work, in the park or on the beach - and they are "oh, so slim-line, compact, portable, restful and very, very cheap!" ...
OK - so the manufacture of paper is damaging to trees, but the computer is more responsible for global warming and is probably
not the safest way long term way in which to store and convey the sum total of human knowledge for the benefit of future
generations. But while not advocating a return to the durable technology and methodology of the "Rosetta Stone" at this present
moment in time, I would encourage everyone to consider seriously the merits of paperback and hardback books continuing to be
available and vigorously promoted alongside the virtues of web and e-book technology.
Solution to hard-copy supply problems
Although many respondents were enthusiastic about e-books per se , they also had very pragmatic reasons for welcoming e-
books. Some students, for example, considered e-books as a solution to some of the problems they faced, especially in regard
to (problematic) access to hard-copy titles. About 250 of the comments (5.2 per cent) were related to printed books. The majority
of these comments were related to textbooks or the books that lecturers recommended. Students complained about the lack of
hardcopies of textbooks, short borrowing time, difficulties accessing the recommended texts and so on. In this kind of situation, it
is natural that some students (about 70, 1.5 per cent) see e-books as the solution to all these problems:
Would be good to have core subject texts as e-books as there is no way libraries can supply the books in the number students
would require. Also students find books too expensive.
Promotion
According to the responses there seems to be a lack of activities for promoting e-books on the librarians' side. About 195 (4.05
per cent) comments indicated the need for better promotion of e-books among students and lecturers:
Better communication between course leaders and library staff, better flagging of e-resources, both on library sites and in course
handouts needed in order that their use is maximised.
I don't really know anything about electronic sources, so it would be better if the librarians were more forthcoming in telling the
students about them.
The lack of awareness about the availability of e-books was accompanied by confusion about what an e-book actually is:
I am not sure whether e-journals count as e-books. If e-journals are included then I am a very regular user of e-books. However,
I do not read textbooks online.
There was also a lack of knowledge about how to access and use e-books and e-resources and this highlights the need for
instructions and the improvement of information literacy programmes at universities:
I could do with a course on how to access these things as I am not very technically minded I don't know how to access the e-
books.

8. I don't think that there is enough emphasis on lecturers and tutors explaining to students HOW to use all the various applications
in the library. I had to teach myself about these, a seminar for all those interested might be of help.
Advantages of e-books
About 90 (1.9 per cent) respondents highlighted the advantages for e-books. The following are not previously mentioned:
- Do not require limited access time (don't have to be returned to the library).
- Solve the lack of space in libraries.
- Are good for snippets of information, reference use and "how-to" manuals.
- Are good for research and systematic review as well as teaching.
- Can be used anywhere, out of campus by distance learners, disabled, and part-timers.
Problems of access
Around about 1.8 per cent (87) of respondents reported difficulties in accessing e-books. Although some of these problems
might be related to specific libraries there is still an issue that librarians and e-book publishers need to investigate and resolve. A
significant proportion of access problems were related to failed attempts to access e-books off campus:
Better access to e-books online. It fails very often when accessing from home.
Athens is a well-established means for accessing electronic resources out of campus and some respondents appreciated it (for
example, The Athens system is very useful for e-books and journals from, e.g. JSTOR). However about 31 (0.6 per cent) of
respondents expressed that they were unhappy with Athens or that they had problems using it:
Athens is a cumbersome system and I wish it could be simplified.
Getting access to e-material has so far been a nightmare, especially through Athens. So I have not used e-books as much as I
might in the future if access is easier for the user.
Another type of access problem was related to simultaneous access by more than one user. Some e-books systems do not
allow this or have restrictions as to how many users can read an e-book at the same time:
The availability of e-books is sporadic and just like going into a standard library, if two users are trying to access the same book
at the same time on a network, it doesn't allow access to the book for one of them, which is bad.
Printing problems
Students wanted to be able to print part of the e-books they read, whether to read them at their convenience or highlight and
annotate them. About 60 (1.3 per cent) respondents complained (a relatively small number it has to be said) about problems
with printing, either they did not allow this or there were restrictions. Also about 18 (0.37 per cent) respondents expressed that
they wanted to be able to print sections of e-books easily:
E-books are useful. My main gripe with them is the way in which you print them off. I have tried to print out whole chapters and
cannot do this, I do not know why. Instead I have had to print out groups of pages and then put them together to form the
chapter. This is annoying and makes accessing e books more tedious and time consuming that it otherwise might be. However,
on the whole I think they are a useful addition to hard copy books.
Saving and carrying problems

9. In total, 73 (1.5 per cent) students said they wanted to be able to save e-books and keep them or carry them on their digital
devices (laptop, ipod ...):
An e-book is not very helpful if you cannot download it on a USB stick or similar.PDF versions of the books are much easier to
read than HTML versions. I would prefer to see more and more books in PDF format.
There could be a number of reasons for this preference. First, they want to be able to read an e-book without the need of being
connected to the internet and being online. Besides the problems users might have with getting constant internet connection,
being online, as a student mentioned, is a source of distraction. While online, a user is more likely to get distracted from his or
her reading because of e-mails and web surfing.
The other reason (and another disadvantage) is the confusion about the pagination of html-based e-books. A few respondents
mentioned that they were confused about the page numbers and pagination structure when they read e-books. This obviously is
not a problem in the case of PDF files.
E-book disadvantages
Besides the disadvantages mentioned already, like screen-reading, printing, saving and so on, there were other disadvantages
mentioned by about 71 (1.47 per cent) respondents, of which a selection are presented in the following:
Could be deleted accidentally (assumed that they can be saved).
Are difficult to browse or skim read (might be specific to some platforms).
Are overpriced.
Can "be tedious if the internet connection is not fast".
"Play havoc with an author's royalties".
Lack serendipity, they remove the ability to accidentally stumble across something on the shelf, which is often more influential
than what was originally being looked for.
Make students over-reliant on computers and reluctant to use the library and do active research.
Are not easy to concentrate on while reading them and it is hard to absorb their information (computer and internet could be
source of distraction).
Reduce the control on plagiarism and increase the concern over copyright.
Makes it hard to annotate and highlight and so on.
A supplement not a substitute
About 67 (1.4 per cent) comments were in some way related to the fact that e-books and printed books should co-exist. Users
found different and supplementary applications for e-books and hard copy and wanted to benefit from both. Students do not
want to see an exclusivity of formats. There was also concern that some university libraries considered e-books a good
alternative or substitute and therefore replaced printed books with e-books. Some were concerned that the move towards the
provision of more e-books means cutting the number of hard copy books in libraries:
E-books do a quite different job from printed books and manuals and the one should not be assumed to be a replacement for the
other. Printed books are still better for random access if you know what you are looking for - search facilities are not the same
thing. Casual browsing will also always be easier It's actually much harder to read and speed read from a screen and the actual
learning process is different - some methods will suit some people and not others. E-books and printed materials must

10. complement and not compete with one another for the richest possible learning experience that is accessible and helpful for the
greatest number of people.
I am greatly concerned by the present very clear agenda to reduce the number of books in libraries, thus removing one of the
most important planks of learning, self-directed study.
E-book technology-related problems
About 47 (0.1 per cent) comments were about technology-related problems. Seventeen respondents were unhappy about the
use of DRM in e-books for different reasons, for example some are incompatible with Linux or Apple computers:
My main concern and I think the single most important issue in the future of electronic books is the problem of DRM (digital
restrictions management).
Aggressive DRM is one of the very few reasons that prevent me from using some e-books.
There were a range of other specific problems with the technology that e-books use that were mentioned in the comments.
Based on comments, a list of some of them is presented in the following:
Ebrary requires specific browser and plug in and not friendly to Linux and Firefox, Ebrary is too tied to Microsoft technology.
E-books need fast computers and high speed internet connection.
ebrary reader is not flexible so it is hard to resize it to maximise the size of the window. I also find it hard to read from as the
screen moves to the next double page rather than to the second of the pages being viewed, which makes it disorientating and
fiddly to read from.
E-book interfaces are not very suitable; too much space is taken up by menus. An example is MyiLibrary interface - so much of
the screen is taken up with browser bars, status bars, controls on the left, etc. that the book is a teeny thing in the middle of the
right hand side.
Reading e-books on screen takes time but the interfaces log the users out of the system every 15 minutes or so for security
reasons.
Some e-books not compatible with Mac or Linux.
MyiLibrary does not like skim reading of more than about 15 pages - it thinks you are trying to print more than copyright allows
and threatens to boot you out.
Pagination is not always obvious.
There are too many platforms and too many access modes and this causes confusion.
There is a disconcerting trend towards proprietary e-book formats, as used, for example, by ebrary and British Library that are
undocumented and unsupported on many platforms. There is need for standardisation. Using standardised open formats that
can be read by a variety of pieces of software or a variety of platforms is important. Using well-known, open standards is more
likely to also enable computers to index and search the e-books.
A lot of e-books are not compatible with reading software on a device other than a, for example a Palm handheld.
Reference use
The difficulty of screen-reading, together with the advantages of digital media in regard to ease of searching and locating
specific keywords or phrases, make e-books suitable for reference use or suitable for the fields where users need only small

11. pieces of information rather than doing large amounts of reading. About 37 (0.77 per cent) respondents mentioned that e-books
are good for dipping in, or for looking for specific information or reference use:
I feel electronic texts would be a valuable resource for reference only.
Another property of e-books that makes them subject-dependent is the assumption that they are or can be more up-to-date than
printed books, hence more suitable for the fields that deal with cutting edge science and technologies:
I read mainly leading edge technology publications, hence online only.
E-book subject-dependent
As mentioned before a few properties of e-books make their attraction subject-dependent. For example, screen reading makes
them unsuitable for the subjects that require a great deal of reading, such as those in the humanities.
A few respondents from English Literature pointed this out:
Studying English Lit. at degree level involves a great amount of reading which just can't be done with e-books; it is just too
uncomfortable on the eyes and posture to read off screen for any great length of time.
I am a part-time student studying English Literature, but I also use the library for my work as a business analyst - and in this area
I am more likely to use e-texts.
Unlike English literature, people from the fields of law and computing seem to be in favour of e-resources:
I study law thus we, law students, are heavily dependent on online materials as there is so much one has to read.
Generally they're good for computing, which is what I teach. I think that's a combination of the subject - students often want to
look up factoids, rather than read a whole essay. They're also used to using screens on a day to day basis.
Conclusions
This is probably the largest LIS survey that has ever been conducted in the UK and possibly elsewhere. The free views of
16,000 scholars cannot be ignored and they raise issues not previously associated with e-books - the importance of "portability"
and environmental factors. The two main advantages of e-books for students are: they were easy to access, which means they
can use them at any time anywhere, and their searchability (another form of access, if you like). These two advantages were
also highlighted in the study by [2] Chu (2003). The findings also show a big potential market for e-textbooks. Although students
seem to favour e-books for pragmatic reasons such as avoiding going to the library, convenience of use, added features such as
searching, and copy and pasting are not thought to be sufficiently student friendly. The most inhibiting feature of e-books is the
difficulty of reading them from the screen. Printing features need to be improved and there should be systematic plans and
programmes organized by librarians for promoting e-books and improving student's information literacy skills in order to get the
maximum from e-books.
The authors would like to thank JISC for funding the study.
Defining an e-book depends on one's perspective and how broadly one views its possibilities. [18] Zivkovic (2008) reviews key
milestones in the development of the e-book over the last decade and addresses the definition of "e-book" through the
standards of ISO, IFLA, and other official agencies. She notes, however, inconsistency in the application of ISBNs from country
to country, which suggests that the parameters and perceptions of e-books are not fully established. During the course of her
article, she shows how the definition has evolved to incorporate new technologies and how the definitions and technologies have
influenced each other along the way. She also makes brief reference to the introduction of single-entity non-print media, from the
CD-ROM to the appearance of a book on the internet, but, as with most discussions of the e-book, the primary focus is on what
has become a "traditional" version of an e-book, namely something static that could appear in print or on CD or DVD.

12. While these definitions may help librarians to categorize and, subsequently, manage e-books, librarians' continued attempts to
"contain" e-books through definition may ultimately prove pointless, depending on the breadth with which e-books are ultimately
defined and on how they evolve.
As part of an earlier article, [14] Soules (2007) explored new types of e-books, interviewing creators to try to understand future
potential. Looking at today's e-books and projecting forward, the following should be considered:
- A print book issued or re-issued in e-format. Examples: a book digitized by Google, offered by Amazon, supplied in a package
from netLibrary, ebrary, etc., or purchased through a library book jobber like Coutts or Yankee Book Peddler.
- An e-only book which could just as easily have been issued in print format. Examples are some of the e-only books issued by
Amazon or the aforementioned vendors.
- A book created through e-feedback and e-revision, but whose formally-issued version is in print format. An example is Gamer
Theory by McKenzie [17] Wark (2007), available as v.2 in print, incorporating suggestions made by readers in an earlier
process, but also accessible on the Institute of the Book web site, where visitors find v.1.1 in "read/write" format, a site to
"visualize," and another to "discuss".
- A print book with URLs directing readers to the web for supplementary material or material that completes the print version. An
example is Keys for Writers by Ann [12] Raimes (2008), which includes an access key to login to a web site.
- An e-only production that enhances text with images, audio, and video. An example is Microsoft's [7] Encarta (2008), once in
CD-ROM and disk formats, and now available through the web.
- An e-only production that is primarily focused on images, audio, and video, with text enhancement. Examples are works
created through the Center for Digital Storytelling or through the University of Houston's Education Uses of Digital Storytelling.
- An e-reference book with text, images, audio, and video, but which is updated continuously, as warranted. An example is [1]
Alexander Street Press' (2006) Critical Video Editions , which might be considered a group of databases, but can also be
considered a series of e-books. The Press itself describes them as a "series [that] combines the excitement of video with new
search capabilities and Alexander Street's Semantic Indexing(TM) " and describes the visual table of contents by saying that
"Navigating video is now as easy as flipping through the pages of a book."
- A web site that is the e-"über"-text for an entire topic, gathering text, images, and audio on an ongoing basis. An example is the
Whitman Archive ([8] Folsom and Price, 1995-), with its efforts to gather all forms of material related to Walt Whitman.
- An e-invention yet to be imagined.
It is interesting to think about how this evolution displays some creative "aha" or discovery moments that represent key steps.
Consider, for example, the moment someone realized that it would be possible to use new technologies to create such an e-
book in the first place. Each individual may experience a discovery moment the first time s/he discovers or is shown something
beyond the traditional e-book. This author's discovery came in 2003 at a digital literature conference with a history "book" that
included mouse-over definitions, still images, and film clips. Another evolutionary moment must have occurred when someone
realized that an e-book does not have to be text enhanced with something else, but can be a creation where the text, if it exists,
enhances the other media or where all the parts have equal value (the University of Houston model). Another evolutionary step
would be the moment when an e-book became independent of print and, in fact, could not appear in print, such as some of the
examples cited above or flash poetry, where the text moves across a computer screen.
All of this raises the question of why multimedia digital storytelling is considered a form of e-book when a feature film is not. A
movie is a single-issue entity with moving images and audio; add sub-titles and there is also text, if text is a determining
characteristic. Is it simply that a movie has been around for long enough to have its own descriptor, has long preceded the e-
book, and has run parallel to print books? Where does an e-book begin and end? And does it - or will it - matter? Or is this just
an adaptation of an old joke: When is an e-book not an e-book? - When it is something else.

13. The practice of using various technologies to develop and enhance a finished product - blogs, for example, or, more broadly,
social networking - expands the e-book beyond its own entity. [17] Wark's (2007) work was issued in "versions" like computer
software. The second version was captured at a moment in time and issued as a print book. In this case, the book's evolution
through the comment and discussion stage was a public element of the process. Writers of traditional print books discuss their
work with colleagues prior to publication, and the peer review or editorial process helps the author shape the formal finished
work. In the past, however, that has occurred pre-print and privately. In this case, the process was not only public, but involved
many more potential contributors because of its public nature and because of technology. The work could be enhanced again
and issued in a new edition, another single-entity issuance, if the author chose to continue rather than move to another project.
The future will see the commercialization of some of these new experiments, along with more reader/user participation. This
leads to questions about authorship and peer-review. Is the cited author really the author? Should s/he be the only name on the
cover and title page or will there be multiple authors, only some of whom will be cited, depending on their level of contribution?
Will such collaborations be considered group authorship entirely? As for peer review, Paolo [11] Mangiafico (2007), Digital
Projects Consultant in the Perkins Library at Duke University, sees it shifting from before to after publication. In the case of [17]
Wark's (2007) book, it could be suggested, however, that peer review took place during publication as it occurred in public,
rather than in a blind refereed setting, and as the work evolved. With social networking, this could become more the norm.
A number of librarians have long suggested that the division of information into monographic and serial categories is something
only a librarian could love - or want. There is now the real possibility of continuous revision of large or small portions of e-books
as the authors or the author/readers incorporate new ideas; add or excise text, images, or other elements; re-structure content in
new ways; etc. In the print world, the precursor to continuous updating is the loose-leaf service, where periodic updates were
shipped to libraries, but the concept of continuous updating was embedded in the changing pages that, at the time, could only
be issued intermittently. In the digital world, Wikipedia is an example of continuous updating. In the tradition of encyclopedias, is
this an e-book/monograph? Or is it something else? Will sporadic issue of new versions continue to be necessary or will there
be an ongoing flow? The idea of an endless flow speeds up the rate of change and moves such creations beyond the single-
entity book or e-book and even beyond the sporadic issuances of a serial or e-serial. Will any sporadic issue even continue? Will
an ISBN or an ISSN be assigned or will ISO develop some other category to assign to these evolving creations that appear to
defy categorization?
Other issues will also need to be addressed. How will these items be cited bibliographically, not just in catalogs, but in the
references in published research? Reliance on the date of access, the citation element that now attempts to address this issue,
fails to clarify what information the researcher/person citing actually viewed on a particular day and time. For faculty using these
e-creations in courses, this endlessly shifting landscape makes it difficult to anchor a common iteration for use by an entire
class. In either case, what may be needed is the ability to select and view information at the exact moment it was viewed by the
person citing, a concept that is overwhelming from an archival and retrieval perspective.
At the moment, these issues may be less important than the possibility that current categories and labels may no longer be
applicable, that current ways of using and referencing information may no longer apply, and that considering information in such
ways may become counter-productive in attempts to broker information through organization and access. Fundamentally
important is the need to broaden the concept of an e-book.
2. The student user
The frontier of e-books may be exciting and cutting-edge, but, ultimately, will the user, at the other end of the e-book, choose
them? To date, e-books have not "taken off" in the way some people expected. A number of reasons have been posited for this.
[13] Sottong (2008) points out that e-readers, while improved, still do not quite meet users' needs for reasons of ergonomics,
readability, and proprietary platforms. He quotes Walt Crawford: "Print books work." He further suggests that "e-books remain as
much a future dream as they were 12 years ago".
Not surprisingly, reactions to e-books, with or without the hardware, are mixed. The Observer ([2] E-books, 2008) ran a series of
articles entitled "E-books." There were enthusiasts and skeptics, those who think we are seeing "the creation of a new art form"
and those who feel "alienated from the books" they know well.
When it comes to university students, however, the pressures are different. They are presented with e-books through e-
textbooks and e-books in their libraries, whether they choose them or whether they have devices to read them. They view most
e-books on a computer unless they have purchased an e-reader privately, and most e-books are traditional although, every day,
new types of e-books appear in library collections.

14. In 2007 and 2008, ebrary conducted a series of four surveys about e-books. In the spring 2008 student survey, [5] ebrary
(2008a) worked with over 150 college and university librarians world-wide to develop a survey "to better understand students'
usage, needs, and perceptions with regard to e-books". A total of 6,492 students completed the survey, representing nearly 400
individual institutions from approximately 75 countries. [6] ebrary (2008b) also offered the same survey to librarians and asked
them to complete the survey as if they were actually students themselves. The goal was to compare the responses from the two
surveys, the actual student survey and the survey "cloned for librarians".
Of the 6,492 respondents to the student survey, 2,707 responded from Italy and 2,143 from the United States. The remaining
respondents were from various countries, but significantly fewer in number, with Hong Kong and Canada being in the 500s. The
primary major of study was engineering (1,983 respondents). The next most frequent majors were architecture at 525 and
business at 439. The 199 librarian respondents to the cloned survey, on the other hand, represented 178 individual institutions in
37 countries, but as approximately 100 were from the United States, with the next most numerous from Canada (approximately
20) and the United Kingdom (fewer than 20), the respondent groups may not be entirely comparable.
There is much to compare between the student and cloned surveys, however. Focusing entirely on the e-book questions, the
following points are of particular interest: In response to "Does your library have e-books (electronic books)?" 57 percent of the
students and 90 percent of the librarians (as students) said yes, 9 percent of the students and 5.5 percent of the librarians said
no, and 33.5 percent of the students and 4 percent of the librarians said "I don't know". Even taking into account the variations in
the respondents' total numbers and their geographical origins, it could be said that librarians are not as clear about students'
awareness as might be desired.
There is also a disparity in the responses to the question "How often do you use e-books that your library provides?" Of the
student responses, 48.5 percent said they never used e-books, but only 22 percent of the librarians said never. The top reason
for this, according to students, was that they did not know where to find e-books (57 percent), while the top reason given by
librarians was that they were too difficult to read (31.5 percent). Librarians may not be as successful in making e-books available
as they think. They may also over-estimate the difficulties associated with reading electronic text.
In other areas, the two groups were more in tune. In response to the question "When you have the option of using either the
electronic or print version of a book, how often do you opt to use the electronic version?" both groups chose "sometimes" as
their top choice. When asked to "indicate if the following statements are true for e-books, print books or both", the top five "true"
responses for e-books are charted for both surveys in Table I [Figure omitted. See Article Image.].
While the results of the survey completed by students may indicate bias in terms of the respondents' subject interest, geographic
location, and, potentially, financial status, key findings included:
- about equal use of e- and print books;
- about equal preference of e- and print books;
- equal trustworthiness of e- and print books;
- high use of search engines in research or class assignments, with other top resources including e- and print books, and e-
references resources; and
- affirmation by 57 percent of students of the importance of information literacy. There is no equivalent analysis of librarian
responses in the cloned survey.
Of particular interest is the response to the question "How important are the following features to e-books?" There were 3,039
student responses to this question and 149 librarian responses. The results, from most to least important, are given in Table II
[Figure omitted. See Article Image.].
In this case, too, librarians have a reasonably good sense of student responses. In fact, this list is an interesting validation of a
couple of librarian assumptions about the importance of the value of searching and anytime/anywhere access. It is also
interesting to consider that some of these features reflect the ability to manipulate information, an ability that may quickly
become very familiar, not necessarily because of e-books, but because of the interactivity of Web 2.0.

15. Not every student, however, has the knowledge, the fiscal means, or the circumstances to use e-books or to implement their
features. Some students are still learning of the existence of an e-book. Perhaps they have been out of school for some years
and have not encountered e-books before; perhaps they have just not discovered them yet; or perhaps they have encountered
them, not known what to do, and chosen something else.
Downloading to a laptop or handheld device raises another issue. This capability assumes the ownership of, or access to, such
a device, which, in turn, throws into relief the digital divide. Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas now gives every
incoming student an iPhone ([10] Levine and Smith, 2008), but California State University, East Bay is an environment at the
other end of the spectrum. Some of its students do not own computers or laptops. If possible, the campus provides laptops on
term loan to the neediest students, at least until the supply runs out. These are not state-of-the-art, but better than nothing.
Some students still function on dial-up at home, so come to the library to use electronic resources that they cannot access
elsewhere. In some situations, if students' computers break, they have nothing. All of this, of course, limits their anytime,
anywhere access as they are bound by the hours of the physical library and their ability to come to the building while they often
work either full-time or part-time.
Ability for more than one student to use an e-book at the same time largely depends on what the student's institution can afford.
This issue comes up particularly when a faculty member asks students to view an e-book or a portion of an e-book as a class
reading and there is a sudden influx of hits on that e-book. When the students reach the limit, they do not know why. They
contact the library about technical difficulties because they think there is a connection or login problem. They do not connect e-
books with the concept of circulation. They are used to entering databases without a user limit.
Copying, pasting, printing, and emailing text present more issues. The students at California State East Bay basically want to cut
and paste into their research papers, print for easier reading or reading when online is not practical (on public transit, for
example), or download to use later, if they have to rush off to class or work. When it comes to the limitations of these features, it
is difficult to know the source of all the barriers. One is clearly copyright and publisher concerns. Just try to work with a title
where this message pops up: "You have exceeded the limit of freely viewable pages by this document's publisher." This
essentially means that the user does not have access to that e-book, just to a part of it. Most platform providers work to secure
more access. As a result, this is one area of continuing improvement. While there are still some platforms where page by page
printing is the only option up to a limited number of total pages, some vendors find ways to cross this barrier. Springer, for
example, supplies e-books in PDF format and allows up to 30 pages of printing at a time. This should enable a student to print
most single chapters from an e-book, paralleling USA fair use practices in the print environment. It is to be hoped that
competition among vendors will continue to contribute to further improvement. As for new types of e-books that defy printing,
librarians need to help students understand other options - how to use "delicious", for example, to track where the e-book lies, or
the "library thing", if they want to "keep" this content in their libraries, or simply bookmarking the e-book for future reference.
The other area of great interest to students is automatic citation. It is quick, easy, and saves them the bother of learning the
finicky details of various citation formats. As far as students are concerned, the citations are accurate, but while there is some
dispute about this, the ability to email citations is a great service. Students at California State East Bay may or may not know
about other features, e.g. highlighting, annotating, etc. To date, they have not drawn librarians' attention to issues with them,
which suggests that they are either not using them or are not running into problems.
Interlibrary loan is another area of concern. Some equivalent to the print world is needed for those e-books which are not freely
available through the web. California State East Bay belongs to a multi-type library consortium for inter-lending of books.
Because the consortial libraries' catalogs list e-books, student searches in the consortium holdings bring up both print and e-
copies. Students are frustrated at their inability to borrow e-books in the same way as they borrow print books. There has been
discussion about suppressing e-book records from these holdings; however, as users' frustrations provide the leverage to
pressure vendors for improvement, their continued inclusion has value. If the titles are suppressed, students will be unaware of
their existence and will assume the title is not held by any library. Their frustration will be diverted elsewhere.
There are a couple of other drivers that will influence how soon students become fully used to e-books. One of these is the
textbook market. Commercial vendors still struggle to make e-books viable. More and more print textbooks come with access
keys to enable students to view enhanced content on a web site, but publishers have not quite "cracked" the e-textbook market
yet. Certain disciplines, e.g. Business, would appear to lend themselves more readily to the e-format, if the number of current e-
book titles is any indication; however, more subjects are turning to e-books for the potential of enhanced features. Perhaps
textbooks may be broken up into individual chapters if one chapter is used in courses more than any other part of the book and
can be sold more effectively as a separate piece, thereby realizing more profit for publishers in a low-profit-margin business. The

16. separation of elements into single pieces also lends itself to the e-course pack/reader market with its collection of faculty-
selected pieces.
Ultimately, e-books and e-textbooks, at least of the "traditional" kind, will become a larger part of the higher education scene
because of distance learning. Online campuses help universities to expand their businesses, offer flexible scheduling for working
and long-distance students, generally increase options, and compete with commercial universities. From an administrative
perspective, online campuses also help universities to cope with the constraints of space on their physical campuses and to
sidestep the financial expenses of expanded building and deferred maintenance. As a result, students will be driven to e-
formats. What, then, will happen to the student who cannot afford to exercise these online options? It is to be hoped that there
will be efforts to build more of the technical requirements into financial aid or to increase loan programs beyond the rudimentary
equipment that loan programs currently provide. Further, if the digital divide is growing in developed countries, helping
developing countries with these challenges will require a major investment. The ultimate irony may be the student who takes
classes online and only comes to campus when s/he must use a few of the print books in the library. The world of higher
education would then come full circle, returning to its beginnings when the library was the only building and classes were held
elsewhere.
3. The faculty user
In fall 2007, ebrary worked with "more than 200 librarians from around the world" to develop a survey "to understand faculty
experiences with e-resources and print materials". The four areas of focus were "usage for research and instruction, attitudes,
perceived strengths and weaknesses, [and] instruction experience and preferences". In this case, there were 906 respondents
representing 300 institutions of higher education in 38 countries. Of those respondents, 519 were from the United States and
387 from other countries, with 94 from the United Kingdom and 88 from Canada, so the mix of respondents was quite different
from the respondents to the student survey, although more in line with the respondents to the cloned survey. The primary
subjects of the respondents were quite varied, but, not surprisingly, library and archival science headed the list at 122, with
education next at 78. The questions focused on how faculty used e-books in their courses, what they would prefer their libraries
to own (the word "own" should be considered cautiously - see below), and questions about e-resources generally.
While the survey asked questions beyond the specifics of e-books, there are some interesting elements about faculty practices
regarding e-books. E-books did not fare very well. In his survey analysis, McKiel ([4] ebrary Faculty Survey, 2007) wrote: "Most
patrons know how to retrieve a book from the shelf once they find it in the catalog. They do not as frequently know how to
effectively use vendor e-book interfaces." Also mentioned were the issues of ease-of-use, portability, and readability. McKiel
further suggested that if patrons learn how to use the vendor interfaces, including searching, 24/7 availability, currency, and text
handling tools, they prefer them for research. Apparently, the students who were surveyed less than a year later have
discovered these features. As a final note, McKiel suggests that the e-book collection needs to be of a reasonable size in order
to make it valuable. As part of the California State University System, California State East Bay currently accesses over 30,000
e-books, but as they are offered through catalog records, librarians emphasize to users that they should seek content and use
the format that results, rather than considering the format first. In the past year, the Chemistry Department specifically asked for
a book on combinatorial chemistry in e-format rather than print format. In the humanities, the English faculty was comfortable
with the suggestion to purchase e-books. In the social sciences, where there are some fully online programs, e.g. in Human
Development, the selection of e-books is accepted readily. Thus, the tide appears to be shifting generally in science, humanities,
and social sciences, with e-books undergoing a slow evolution rather than a dramatic revolution.
McKiel ([4] ebrary Faculty Survey, 2007) compared the questions "How do you currently integrate the use of e-journals into your
courses?" and "How do you currently integrate the use of e-books into your courses?" Not surprisingly, e-journals are integrated
more frequently than e-books, but this may be due to how long e-journals and databases have been around or to the different
needs of individual disciplines. There were more comments, however, about availability of appropriate content, difficulty of use,
students lack of easy access to computers; however, as pointed out above, because of distance learning, if nothing else, this
shift will continue.
In comparing e-books and print books, faculty sees the advantages of each format, again stressing the positives of searching,
quick reference, remote access, and subject matter for e-books and portability, breadth and depth of content, and readability for
print books. Faculty does think that there are too many technical restrictions on e-books, citing printing, number of users, etc.
The concern about number of users is interesting, however, as a print book, if circulated, is only available to one user at a time,
but this is probably connected, once again, to faculty being used to unlimited access to databases. There was also the comment
that "Printed books are better for complex materials with statistics and graphics", which is surprising as some assume that the
ability to understand some complex material must naturally be enhanced by audio and visual elements. Finally, there are

17. references to the advantages of e-books for distance learning and assistive technology, both of which hold great promise for the
adoption of e-books.
4. The librarian broker
Librarians are key brokers for students and faculty in the use of e-books. Ebrary's first survey ([3] ebrary Global eBook Survey,
2007), not the cloned survey, was of librarians. The goal of that survey was "to better understand the digital content needs of the
library community". There were 583 respondents from 552 individual libraries in 67 countries. Of the libraries, 77 percent were
academic and 52 percent were North American. Librarians claimed that the majority of their users accessed library-acquired e-
books through the catalog, with the library web site coming in second. E-book usage, at that time, was described primarily as
either fair (37 percent) or good (35 percent). Librarians indicated that the driver for e-book use was the integration of MARC
records into the OPAC, which makes sense when the most common method of accessing e-books is through the catalog. In
fact, the ability to integrate e-books with other library resources and web information was considered critical. Inhibitors to e-book
usage included lack of awareness, followed by difficult-to-use platforms, readability difficulties, lack of training, and others.
Librarians also indicated that they preferred to purchase rather than subscribe to e-books (59-55 percent). The most frequent
response from faculty to this same question was that it did not matter.
When asked about the most important considerations for purchasing e-books, the factors for librarians included: price, subject
matter, access model (single-user, multi-user, etc.), currency, budget earmarked to purchase titles, usage of title under
subscription or print, research tools and technology, contributing publishers, other, and integration with print ordering process. At
the time, the importance of interlibrary loan for e-books was split between "not at all", (41 percent), somewhat (41 percent), and
very (18 percent).
Finally, librarians were asked about what they needed from a delivery platform. This included integration with other resources,
download capabilities, support for multiple file types, integration with an institutional repository or content management system,
library-hosted, PDF-based (now offered by Springer), vendor-hosted, other, and online only (no download).
5. Issues
The key point with these surveys is that student users, faculty users, and librarians do not share the same priorities, even if
librarians can pretend to be students and come up with similar answers to a number of the student questions. It is possible that
some of the librarians' answers to their own librarian survey might be different today, even though it is only a year and a half
since it was conducted. Areas such as interlibrary loan, for example, might move up librarians' priority list and issues of archiving
and assistive technology might be added. With a United States legislative mandate to be accessible (and strongly driven in the
California State University system), this last item has moved front and center for all formats, e- and print.
Selection, acquisitions, and technical services
Librarians' primary consideration - cost, however, is likely to continue to top the librarians' list. Student users, in particular, do not
consider cost. Faculty are more aware of this, but neither group has a full idea of the real cost of e-books. Here are a couple of
recent examples of list prices taken from a book vendor's site on 18 August 2008. The combinatorial chemistry book mentioned
above is specifically the title Combinatorial Chemistry and Technologies: Methods and Applications, 2nd edition. It lists at
$169.95 USD (hardback and paperback versions) and US$243.28 (e-book). This disparity is fairly typical. In English, there is
more variation. Classroom Instruction that Works with English Language Learners lists at US$26.95 (hardback and paperback
versions) and US$32.34 (e-book), not a big difference, but Asian American Literature , by Bella Adams lists at US$22.00
(paperback) and US$121.20 (e-book, single-user license). While three instances are not a sample, the point is that e-books
currently tend to be more expensive than print books. Each difference impacts the number of new titles a library can acquire
and, in these days of tight budgets, this is significant.
Yet, librarians, too, are driven to e-books by the online campus, knowing that the materials must be available for distance
learners, even as the university faces budget issues, student challenges in securing appropriate technology, and assistive
technology needs. The enrichment that e-books can provide also makes them desirable acquisitions, but the key drivers are
outside the content or its enrichment.
Selection is challenging for more reasons than budget. On the one hand, with packages, librarians have ceded some of their
selection control to vendors and publishers. This parallels the situation with journals. In both cases, libraries receive some titles

18. that would not be chosen for the collections, but they come as part of the package. The choice of what appears in packages may
rest with the vendor, the publisher, a central consortium (if applicable), and, only to some degree, with the library.
Librarians also select individual titles, but do they buy them, which is why, above, a caution was given regarding the use of the
survey word "own"? Options can include purchase or subscription; however, even with purchase, there is generally a caveat.
After a few years, librarians will be confronted with another choice - give up the title or begin to pay a platform fee. This is
particularly troublesome because most librarians are not in a position to commit to ongoing costs. How this will play out remains
to be seen.
E-reference titles, e.g. [9] Gale Virtual Reference Library (2003), are very much ongoing costs, but they are treated in the same
way as databases and have slipped into the same pattern without a great deal of adjustment. Some experimental types of e-
books primarily come through the web. As a result, the challenge is to integrate them into the collection. Should they be
"cataloged" or simply made available - somewhere - on the library web site?
E-books that are digitized by Google are chosen by vendors and various selection committees, but decisions are also based on
copyright, the availability of a title, and the physical condition of the copy. These decisions are, once again, not necessarily
content-based, but based on practicalities and non-content criteria.
Part of this selection challenge lies in the durability of the end result. This is not only a matter of archiving and technology, but
also a question of copyright, publisher and vendor shifts, and other changes. Librarians are sent lists of titles that a publisher has
decided to pull from an e-book vendor. They must then choose whether to purchase them or simply let them go. This loss of
control is a concern, particularly if a faculty member has integrated that book, or part of it, into a lesson plan. At California State
East Bay, there was even one example of a title where a chapter was pulled, leaving the library with an e-part-book. It is to be
hoped that this was an aberration and not a promise of things to come. Information, however, is fractioning - chapters, pieces -
and how to handle them is a challenge.
Acquisitions librarians and staff must try to keep up with and understand the evolution that is underway, keeping in mind that
traditional categories will no longer entirely hold. They need to understand what selectors want - a purchase, a subscription,
acquisition in whole or in part. They negotiate or participate in negotiating contracts, or they acquire materials even when they
have no control over contracts because those contracts are decided by others.
Contracts are more numerous and grow more complex. It is key to try to make them work with the user in mind, not just with the
libraries' needs in mind, which hearkens back to the troubling fact that the lists of priorities for e-books are not the same among
students, faculty, and librarians. To focus on user needs, extensive communication is essential with users, with other areas
within the library, between libraries and their institution's financial operations, and between libraries and their central consortia.
This process is no longer a matter of receiving a selection request and ordering it, but a complex structure of decision-making,
incorporating multiple and often conflicting needs. Most important is the closer connection between acquisitions at the front end
and the user at the back end because the final contract is what the user must live by. Particularly in larger libraries, technical
services staff can be quite distant from their users, but now, more than ever, that needs to change.
When it comes to e-books delivered through the web, the challenges are different. If it is a question of an e-book that is
supplemented on the web, the pieces need to be coordinated so that the purchased or subscribed portion and the portion
delivered through the web are treated holistically. For web e-books, the decisions involve cataloging, putting them on library web
pages, coordinating them on a subject page or pages for the discipline or disciplines that are likely to want them, and generally
promoting the material as an integrated part of the collection as a whole.
Reference and instruction
Dealing with the public brings librarians directly against the issues and problems that the ebrary Student Survey references in
the student priorities. When students first encounter a catalog record for an e-book at California State East Bay, many contact
the reference desk. The transitory nature of the reference desk generally means that librarians on duty show users how to open
e-books, how to navigate the forward and backward arrows to move through the pages, how to click on the chapter headings to
jump through the text, and how to access them from home (often requiring a small plug-in). They may cover a few other points,
usually in response to questions about printing and downloading, but they rarely show students the types of features that give e-
books their big edge - searching, highlighting, etc. - all the manipulations that are not possible with a print book, because they
must move on to the next user.

19. How, then, do librarians instruct users on the existence of e-books and on their advantages? For those who teach formal
courses in information literacy and library skills, there is an opportunity to work directly with student users in a sustained way.
For those who do not teach courses, there are efforts to create tutorials of various kinds. Examples include the [16] University of
Wisconsin - Stout (2008), where a web page consolidates various types of e-book sources and includes instructions about how
to use netLibrary, and the [15] University of Virginia Library's (2007) Electronic Text Center page on "Ebooks", which includes
some instructions about searching and links to downloading various types of readers. These sites, however, presume that users
know that e-books exist (consider again the disparity in responses from student and librarian perceptions on this topic). These
sites also rely either on users' initiatives in seeking and finding the sites or on librarians directing users to them. Learning
detailed manipulation of e-books is, therefore, a hit or miss affair. The increasing sophistication of e-books is largely left up to the
user to discern.
As for the other priorities, librarians and library staff hear about the problems - inability to access, inability to get the plug-in to
download, inability to open the e-book, etc. Each is dealt with on a case by case basis. Occasionally, users ask for a print
equivalent because of readability issues, restrictions on printing all the pages they want, etc. In constrained budget times, there
is rarely another copy in print form as most libraries now acquire only one copy of any title.
5. Conclusion
Despite the issues and despite their slower-than-expected evolution, e-books prevail. The current technical issues will be
resolved, even as new ones spring up. Librarians will continue to acquire more and more e-books, in packages or individually,
and work to help users with some configuration that integrates e-books into the rest of the collection; inform users of their
existence; and provide some instruction on how to find, search, and use them. At the moment, librarians enter records for e-
books into their catalogs and provide web sites to direct users to various places where e-books can be accessed - in the catalog,
digitized in Google, on free web sites, and on experimental sites. Librarians view e-books as another part of the collection and
wrestle with the challenges they present, but as e-books persist, evolve, and shift, they may look back and wonder just when
they became a standard part of the information landscape and why they thought an e-format of a print equivalent was all there
was.
Even as that happens with the most common types of e-books currently in existence, there is the future. Will e-books last?
Absolutely. Have librarians ever given up a format or chosen not to archive it? After all, there are still micro-cards and long-
playing records, even if it is difficult to find anything on which to read or play them.
Ultimately, it comes down to what content creators want to develop and convey. E-books offer so many options - text, audio, still
images, moving images - and so many devices on which to read them - computers, iPods, PDAs. Creators are experimenting.
They want to embody and manifest their ideas and emotions in a meaningful format and they want that format to emerge
organically from their ideas. Each creation will not only be unique in itself, but unique in its manifestation.
Just as the e-book will come in many formats, even as its name continues to carry its genetic heritage, there will be new
technologies that prompt further evolution into something yet to be envisioned. Beyond that, the e-book will never be static,
continually embracing new possibilities.
It is incredibly exciting.
Critical Video Editions
The Observer
ebrary Global eBook Survey
2007 Global Faculty E-book Survey sponsored by ebrary
2008 Global Student E-book Survey - Cloned for Librarians
The Walt Whitman Archive

20. The 2008 Horizon Report: Key Emerging Technologies
Keys for Writers
Ebooks
Electronic Books
Gamer Theory
Bilgi Dünyasi
The purpose of this paper is to find out whether eBooks are cannibalizing print books, as well as an assessment of factors that
are influencing eBook usage. Ebooks are a hot topic. Traditional book publishing, especially in the academic world, is changing
at a rapid pace. The question on everybody's mind is what direction book publishing will take? Will print survive in the Google-
generation, or is it destined to be totally replaced by eBooks? Springer publishes over 4,000 book titles annually, which are
converted into eBooks almost without exception. Being the market leader and innovator of a new business model in electronic
books in the STM area, Springer has conducted a study on the implications of the Springer eBook collection in comparison to its
print book activities. Design/methodology/approach - The study is based on interviews with both end-users and librarians. In
addition, Springer has assessed the (COUNTER-compliant) usage statistics from SpringerLink. Findings - Overall, Springer's
eBook usage is already 50 percent of its journal usage, while the amount of content compared with journals is only 15 percent.
Taking this success of eBook usage into account, Springer still believes strongly in the print model, and has recently launched
MyCopy: heavily discounted print-on-demand books from the electronic versions. Originality/value - The study shows that print
and electronic can exist together, and will complement each other's strengths. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
The purpose of this paper is to quantify the use of electronic journals in comparison with the print collections in the Guru Gobind
Singh Indraprastha University Library. A detailed analysis was made of the use of lending services, the Xerox facility and usage
of electronic journals such as Science Direct, Emerald Management Xtra, ACM, IEL Library, subscribed to by the Library. The
paper finds that, although many more users at the University are accessing electronic journals, it is not affecting the use of the
print collection. The numbers of transactions and photocopy requests of print articles are continuously on the rise. More
research can be done by carrying out a deep log analysis of usage statistics of e-journals. Usage statistics of some of the
resources could not be accessed. The paper provides useful information on the use of electronic journals in comparison with the
print collections in a university library.
In an interview, several people talked about e-textbooks. Paul Musket, Associate Director of the University Bookstore at the
University of Missouri, said that until the students grasp the digital book idea, it's problematic. They generally come from K 12,
where they don't have digital books, to this environment, where digital books appear to be a good deal. Darla Runyon, Assistant
Director and Curriculum Design Specialist, CITE, at Northwest Missouri State University, also said that the faculty have the
content knowledge to develop e-textbooks. But most don't have the skills to develop the interactive pieces that teachers want to
see in an electronic textbook. Robin Schulze, English Department Head at the Pennsylvania State University, added that the
human factor should not be undersold. If the faculty member is very, very interested in the electronic textbook and really makes
an effort, that increases its value. But if the faculty member is already resistant to the process, there's just no way you're going to
sell the idea, no matter what you do.
In 2005, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) delivered a report to Congress on the landscape of higher education.
The study answered several questions, among which were: how has the cost of college changed over recent years and what
factors have contributed to those changes. The GAO found that textbook prices have increased at twice the rate of inflation for
the past two decades. In an attempt to expound on the findings in the study and to explore the potential impact an expanded
utilization of e-textbooks on the cost of a college education, this paper will examine the current and future use of e-textbooks in
addressing the ever increasing costs of a college education. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]