Ebooks Face Triple Threat

A survey of libraries done by ebook vendor ebrary found that while ebooks have become more popular, growth is being slowed for a number of reasons. According to Allen McKiel, director of libraries at Northeastern State University (Tahlequah, OK), who reviewed the survey results for ebrary, three broad issues emerged: “the intertwined relationship between print and electronic,” combined with “the complexity of e-marketing models” has exacerbated an “already tense relationship” between libraries and publishers; “ebook collections and research tools are not well understood by a significant percentage of faculty and students”; and “a growing percentage of libraries are participating in the distribution of e-content.”

The survey shows that ebooks are now widely adopted, with 88 percent of libraries saying they own or subscribe to ebooks and nearly half saying they have access to more than 10,000. The survey was completed by 552 individual libraries, the majority of which (77 percent) are academic. Usage, however, is something else. Only six percent of respondents said ebook usage was excellent, compared to 22 percent who said usage was poor. Most students use ebooks via the library catalog, but “low use of the catalog” is not the issue. Instead, librarians said the major inhibitors to ebook use were “lack of awareness,” followed by difficulty in reading ebooks, difficult-to-use platforms, and lack of training.

“There is a lack of understanding of the strength of the research nature of the ebook collection,” McKiel observed, saying that instruction is key, and students will become more receptive as they gain awareness of the tools ebooks provide, such as keyword searching. McKiel also reiterated a long-held belief: patrons so far still prefer reading print books. He pointed to another well-discussed barrier to students' ever reading ebooks “cover-to-cover”: the lack of a suitable, commonly available reading device.

Aside from student attitudes, it's clear that publishers face a number of additional challenges with libraries on the business side. Respondents said “price” was their primary concern in purchasing ebooks, followed by “content.” They expressed a strong preference against duplication of print and ebooks in their collections. Restrictions like a “single-user” model were another concern, which McKiel viewed as both a price and a content issue, noting that using technology to “restrict access artificially” is counterintuitive to librarians' desire to use technology to increase access.

A “modest majority (56 percent) of librarians said they were either already digitizing their own content or considering doing so, which suggests that libraries are “cutting their teeth on a publishing role for their institutions,” even though mostly in special collections or for “internal use” at this juncture.

The survey was conducted by ebrary this spring to “understand better the digital content needs of the library community.” The full results are available at the ebrary web site.