2014 Charleston Library Conference

Academic libraries continue to increase e-book holdings, but what do our users think of them? Are they eagerly embracing e-books, slowly getting more comfortable with them, or only reluctantly using them when necessary? How can we enhance the value of these collections for our users?At the 2012 Charleston Conference, the CTW Library Consortium (Connecticut College, Trinity College, and Wesleyan University) presented the results of a 2011 ethnographic study of students using e-books. To monitor changes over time, Wesleyan has repeated this study annually, and we are currently gathering our fourth year of data. We also implemented a campus-wide survey of undergraduates to supplement our qualitative findings with quantitative data. While some findings have remained consistent, we have found interesting changes and shifting trends. More students are aware of and have used e-books, but that has not translated into increased sophistication of use. When we started our study, students were approaching e-books analogously to print books; now they tend to approach e-books more as they do online journal articles, which has affected what they expect to be able to do with e-books. Most students still start our interviews with a strong preference for print books over e-books, but that gap narrows significantly by the end of our sessions, indicating that a guided use of e-books would likely enhance their experience of and ability to use e-books. We will discuss how our findings have assisted our efforts to market our e-book collection, develop effective instruction strategies on using e-books, make appropriate selections from available alternatives, and inform vendors of our users’ needs and preferences. Since the application of these findings is context-specific, we will invite the audience to share their experiences and hypothesize how these findings might apply in their situations.