QuickWire: Students’ e-Book Use Has Flatlined Since 2008

November 4, 2011, 3:08 pm

Students’ use of electronic books has grown little, if at all, over the past three years, according to international surveys of more than 6,500 college students conducted in 2008 and again this year. The finding, from ebrary’s Global Student E-book Survey, surprised audience members when the survey report was previewed this week at the Charleston Conference, a gathering of librarians, publishers, and e-book vendors. Even so, presenters said they felt confident that the number of e-book users would grow more rapidly over the next six months, and that libraries and colleges must be ready to handle the demand. Other results from the survey showed that while students feel there is a need for both print and e-books, they would opt for the e-book if available. Respondents also said the availability of more titles in their areas of study would help make e-books more suitable for the classroom. A full report on the survey will be available in January.

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raza_khan

So…. two questions come to mind.

1. What is the reason for the no female faculty in leadership position at Dan-Farber as defended by the institution?

2. What was or were the reason(s) for Lynn Hlatky fired as defended by the institution?

Raza
________________________
Raza Khan, Ph.D.
Dr.Raza.Khan@gmail.com
frankwrite

Students’ ebook use may have plateaued or stopped growing, but it hasn’t “flatlined,” which normally means nothing is happening, as in the heart stopped beating.
texasmusic

“Everybody” has ebook readers now. Make textbooks compatible with eReaders and sales will begin growing again. No one wants to have to drag the laptop around so they can access their textbooks.
http://www.cuttingedgehistory.com Steve Griffin

iPad texts were part of Job’s thinking as laid out by that latest biography. The nook color is on sale now for $200. It looks like it may go that way. Interactivity could be really cool, but also potentially distracting. Comparing textbooks is probably one of the most fun things that can be done. Finding the right one at the right price point is pretty tough though. I wonder what the ebook ones will end up doing for that dynamic?
walkerst

More importantly still, create an e-textbook licensing model for libraries! So far, no producer of e-textbooks allows libraries to license their textbooks for multiple simultaneous users. We got funding a bit over a year ago to buy textbooks, specifically, and after extensive research, not one of the textbook publishers we called (and we called over a dozen) would allow us to have a library license. They offered such idiotic suggestions as “Why don’t you just buy a copy for each student in the class?” Sure, right – we want to buy 800 copies of a $250 biology textbook that will be used for 1 term each year, and which will be replaced by a new edition every 2 years. Sure, libraries have unlimited budgets, and we’re all just looking for something – anything – on which to spend all that money – NOT. We have a lot of digital books – something like 50,000 at last count – but these are only rarely books that are being used as textbooks for classes. Our student body is largely quite poor – the average family income for our students is below $50,000, and we’re in NYC. So we would love to be able to help the students more financially, and having textbooks in the library would be a good way to do this. But we are reluctant to buy many print texts because our already-badly-cut collections budget simply has virtually no room for these, and they are also among the most mutilated and stolen items in the library. And no one will sell us e-textbooks in any sort of useful way. So what’s a library to do? We advocate. If I could get licenses for multiple simultaneous users of e-textbooks for the 50 most expensive textbooks used by our students and faculty, this would do a tremendous service. I know publishers don’t really like libraries – really, they don’t, despite their protestations to the contrary, because for some reason, they think every single student or faculty member would buy every book or journal article or subscription if they couldn’t get it from the library. So we cut into their profits. But they’re wrong – many students will simply not buy what they can’t afford, and will try to make do some other way, by sharing textbooks, copying a chapter or two here and there, or just trying to manage without it. The libraries are good customers, and we NEED to be involved in the e-textbook world. But we’re never, ever going to buy a copy of a textbook for every student. We can’t afford it, and that’s completely NOT our mission. We aren’t supposed to replace the bookstore. Any publishers out there listening?
http://www.facebook.com/dwjordan Donald Jordan

The problem I see is that there is no clear definition of ebook. The platform and file type (as well as distribution and pricing) have a lot to do with acceptance. While finishing up my graduate studies, I found ebooks in the ePub and Kindle formats to be very useful and I could look up notes and information faster than my paper book peers. In contrast, one web based versions of an ebooks I encountered from a textbook publisher which I felt was one step above unusable malware. In efforts to restrict use and keep students from copying, many textbook publishers are experimenting on “ebooks” that function more like annoying blog slideshows with content carved up in such a way that you must continually navigate back and forth through hyperlinks with almost no ability for smooth continuous reading. To make matters worse, some publishers have adopted models where the licencing fee is almost as much as the physical book, but access expires, cutting students off so that the “ebook” can no longer be used as a resource beyond the current course.
collegebookseller

One of the reasons ebook sales at our college bookstore have not grown as much as they could is that we can really only sell an ebook when it matches exactly with an adopted printed textbook. Many of our adoptions we now receive from instructors (especially for large introductory classes that use traditional textbooks) are for bundles (consisting of a textbook and other printed or electronic materials) or a customized version of the textbook (plus or minus what is in the standard textbook). Publishers increasingly market textbooks this way to get a step up on the competition and also to discourage the resale of their textbooks as used books (as the used books wouldn’t contain the other materials in the bundle or the customized version). However, this has also discouraged or restricted the sale of their textbook’s ebook versions as well as they do not contain these materials either.

Another factor is that some of these bundles include a ebook version of the textbook, so students are being offered the use of a ebook along with their printed book. Thus in a sense they are paying for both (even if it is marketed by the publishers as being free with the purchase of the book). The sales of these ebooks though are somewhat hidden in with the sales of printed books.

The college textbook publishers (if there were any at the conference) shouldn’t have been surprised by the results of this survey, as it is a result of their own marketing strategies.
matt_barnes

As a member of the ebrary team that conducted this survey, I don’t believe the article’s suggestion that e-book use has flatlined accurately reflects the survey’s findings or our conclusions. To say use has flatlined suggests e-books are dying or are otherwise crippled and this is simply not the case. ebrary has actually seen dramatic growth in the use of e-books on our platform between 2008 and 2011.

What is interesting about ebrary’s 2011 student survey, which was about e-books in general, not just ebrary, is that it does not correlate with our internal usage statistics in several important areas:

1.      Awareness: Patron awareness of e-books in libraries between 2008 and 2011 has increased only slightly according to our survey, which was a surprise. BUT 69% of patrons still reported an awareness level between ‘good’ and ‘excellent’.

2.      Usage: As measured by the number of hours a patron uses an e-book each week, usage has remained relatively constant, which was also a surprise. BUT slightly more than half of patrons still report using e-books every week. (Those using e-books for 5 to 10 hours per week actually increased slightly.)

3.      Preference: Patron preference for e-books over print books has not increased as much as we would have expected, but the vast majority of students would still choose electronic over print if available: In 2011 25% of patrons said they would “very often” choose e over p, 24% said they would “often”, and 32% stated the would “sometimes” choose electronic over print. Just 4% of students indicated they would “never” choose electronic books over print if available.

Theories about why these contradictions exist were discussed at length during the Charleston Conference presentation. One possibility is that far more patrons are using e-books, thus driving usage statistics, but the average patron in 2011 is using them in a similar manner to the average patron in 2008. Another theory that was discussed at length during the Charleston presentation is that many patrons don’t distinguish between e-books and other online information and simply aren’t aware their usage has increased on this particular format.

We will be posting the live recording from the Charleston Conference shortly and making the survey findings public soon, which we hope will encourage additional discussion.

Matt Barnes
Vice President of Marketing
ebrary
bizprof55

Just as an experiment, last week, I spent one day surfing the Internet and came up with an entire semester’s worth of information on a business class topic…. for free (including some great videos, powerpoint presentations, interviews with professionals, and current articles). (Caveat No. 1: Make sure the material you use is not infringing on anyone’s copyrights, and err on the side of caution.) Then, I put all of the information together into one, big “ebook”. I’m in the process of editing it now, and believe me, most of it is right on target. And, I can change it whenever I want to. Moreover, my students can have it for free in a .pdf, along with the links embedded. Textbooks? HA. (Caveat No. 2: I realize this is not a good idea for some disciplines).