June 24, 2008
Survey Finds That Only Half of College Students Use E-Books
If a recent survey of college students paints an accurate picture, e-books have a long way to go before becoming mainstream. Of 6,452 students worldwide who responded to the survey, 3,132, or 49 percent, said they never use e-books. The remaining 51 percent use e-books less than one hour to more than 10 hours per week. The survey was conducted by Ebrary, a company that provides electronic content and technology to libraries, publishers, and other businesses.
Here are some other findings of the survey:
- Fifty-seven percent of students who never use e-books say it is because they don’t know where to find them.
- Fifty-one percent of students say that when they have a choice, they opt to use an electronic version over a print version of a book “often” or “very often.”
- Seventy-seven percent of students who use e-books say they find and gain access to e-books through a library Web site.
- U.S. students use e-books less than their foreign counterparts.
The survey was skewed in favor of students who have easy access to the Web since all students answered survey questions online. —Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Tuesday June 24, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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They also surveyed many Third World countries where the few who do have Web access may overstate their use or have very different use-patterns from students in developed countries. This report is irrelevant.
— S. Britchky Jun 24, 02:47 PM #
Considering how young e-books really are, the title of the article could just as easily say “Survey Finds Half of Students Already Use eBooks.” Nice spin by the Chronicle.
— Kyle Johnson Jun 24, 03:38 PM #
I’m surprised that the survey shows so many have used an e-book. I suspect lack of clarity in the survey about how much they are “used.”
I think that the 51% set includes the ones like me who have sought out an ebook, only to abandon it as unreachable via my connection or unreadable on my monitor.
I teach my students that ‘hits’ like that don’t count in research.
— Lloyd Daub Jun 24, 05:30 PM #
I recently borrowed a Kindle to use while on a trip and found that it took a bit of getting used to but I was able to read 3 books quite comfortably on it. I think it’s an idea in which technology just needs time to become accepted.
On the other hand, a major impediment for me is that having finished a book, I’d like to lend it to my friend but can’t. That will slow ebook adoption.
— Robert Jun 25, 07:49 AM #
The survey was done by eBrary, a company that sells e-books. Why is this kind of advertising showing up as an article in the Chronicle?
— Sue Jun 25, 07:53 AM #
Publishers fear eBooks because they think they will mean the end of their industry.
They are right. Too bad they cannot see this and look to evolve their industry to embrace this technology. But they are going the way of the music industry. Once there is a real ‘iPod’ for ebooks – the Kindle is close but not there yet IMHO – then it’ll be too late.
I, for one, pretty much only read eBooks. And my kids carry eBook readers around with them instead of their nintendo DSs. I love seeing my 9 year old reading instead of playing video games, and the ereader she’s using costs less than $90 (it’s a Palm PDA).
— Stephen Jun 25, 09:04 AM #
Most e-books, including those from ebrary, are not being carried around on a device. They are available through the library catalog. Unfortunately, there is still no “standard”, so each vendor uses a different format, some requiring plug-ins or add-ons that are merely annoying and a barrier to easy use. Library patrons don’t know(or care) from one vendor to another, so they are often perplexed that ebooks are not uniformly presented. We have a long way to go.
— Christine Jun 25, 09:33 AM #
As a university librarian there are two issues that I face when considering the purchase of e-books for the collection; cost and access. Cost-why are e-books so much more expensive than the print? Access-why do some e-book providers only allow one user at a time and for only a limited time? In some cases only two hours at a time then the patron must “check the book out” again. The format would seem to suggest a lower cost per title than print to produce. Adding on some percentage for 24/7 access, remote access “You don’t have to come into the Library to check the book out,” yes. But, in some cases up to twice the cost of the print??? Access should be multiple users and normal circulation periods.
— cb Jun 25, 10:24 AM #
The biggest issue that I see is access. Almost all of the eBooks that I have looked at from eBrary and other library resources is that they can only be read on the computer while you have an Internet connection. I don’t want to think about the speed on dialup which is still a concern despite the inroads of broadband. Some do allow you to print one page at a time when you have that screen open, but that makes for long and laborious work to make something portable. The ability to download and an affordable reader would go a long ways to making the format more useable. If I want to read something, I don’t necessarily want to be locked to my laptop.
— George Jun 25, 10:45 AM #
People have been predicting the demise of the printed book for a long time. People predicted that movies would kill off the stage, that television would kill off the movies, that cheap paperback books would eliminate quality hardcovers, and that computers would made file cabinets obsolete, since we’d all be working in the paperless office. That’s why Canadian pulp sales have tripled in the past thirty years—because the paperless office makes as much sense as the paperless bathroom, as someone once put it.
E-books will eventually earn a place for some kinds of reading, and that’s fine. But the bound book still needs nothing more than light to be used.
I think all this says more about predictions than about e-books. How many formats have come and gone in the last few years? They’re getting there, hampered mainly by lack of understanding of how they’ll really be used.
Meanwhile, we don’t know what the weather will be like next week.
— dan Jun 25, 12:06 PM #
Can’t you just take the letter “E” (in front of “Books”)out of the title of this survey and the results are just as true?
— Jeff Jun 26, 09:24 AM #
We found a student here in our university library’s computer lab printing out the entire text of an electronic book from a major publisher. When asked why they said they wanted to borrow the book and this was they only version. They don’t have a PC at home. They asked how they could possibly read a 400+ book on a computer screen, and here in the library?
— RO Jun 26, 10:09 AM #
Personally I love using the e-version of all books I’ve read on my couch or at my desk. With the search feature I can find that critical page or statement fast. The biggest complaint from my students? Only one of them can be on the book at a time. That restricts how I can use the book for class assignments. For now it’s been more effective to create a textbook from select portions of the desired books (with copyrights, of course) and have the students use that. I’d like to get past this care and feeding copy into one the students an actually use when they are ready.
— Ursula Jun 26, 05:10 PM #
Check out the future of E-Textbooks at www.flatworldknowledge.com
— Troy Carter Jun 27, 06:06 PM #
I have used both the Sony and Kindle ebook readers. I find them easy to use for books that are all text – such as a novel. Photo’s and graphics on these monochrome screens lose a lot. We have a push in our state to reduce textbook costs and are experimenting with online textbooks for our online distance learning classes. So far it seems to work as long as the ebook allows more than one access at a time. I believe that in the area of textbooks ebooks maybe successful when teachers can pick and choose chapters and customize their class text. We have noticed that our techs will often go our tech ebooks sites and download specs or instructions for some item they’re working on into their PDA or laptop and take it to the worksite to help them on the spot. So I do think that under certain circumstances ebooks are already very useful. Also it appears that web generations reading habits are different from earlier generations in that they more often read many short bits online rather than long print versions of text.
— Jeff / Oklahoma Jul 1, 05:50 PM #