Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

How Do You Like Your Books: Print Or Digital? An Analysis On Print And E-Book Usage At The Graduate School Of Education, Dana Haugh

Library Faculty Publications

The shift from physical materials to digital holdings has slowly infiltrated libraries across the globe, and librarians are struggling to make sense of these intangible, and sometimes fleeting, resources. Materials budgets have shifted to accommodate large journal and database subscriptions, single-title article access, and most recently, e-book holdings. This analysis measures the impact of digital acquisitions in an academic setting during a highly transformative period of library practices. The study finds that both electronic and print books are valuable to the academic research community at GSE.

Drawing Comparisons: Analyzing Art & Architecture Print And E-Book Usage, Madelynn Dickerson, Jamie Hazlitt, Caroline Muglia, Jeremy Whitt

Library Staff Publications and Research

Recent studies have shown that despite possible preconceptions, e-books in art and architecture subject areas are actually quite well used. By collaborating across four SCELC-affiliated Southern California institutions (Claremont Colleges Library, Loyola Marymount University, Pepperdine University, and the University of Southern California), we engaged in extensive usage analyses to understand more about what might motivate art and architecture researchers to seek out e-books, and compare that usage to print books.

The Library Is Our Lab: The Case For Print Books In An Academic Library, Peggy Ellis, Fran Gray

Western Libraries Presentations

Humanities researchers consider the library to be their laboratory, and its print collections their essential research equipment. In spite of anecdotal evidence that both students and faculty in the Humanities prefer print materials over e-books, academic libraries are allocating a steadily increasing proportion of their acquisitions budgets toward the purchase of e-books across all disciplines.

At Western University in London, Ontario, Peggy Ellis and Fran Gray surveyed Arts & Humanities faculty members and graduate students to gain a better understanding of their attitudes toward e-books. The objectives of our research are three-fold: to determine whether researchers in the Humanities departments …

Library E-Book Platforms Are Broken: Let's Fix Them, Joelle Thomas, Galadriel Chilton

Library Staff Publications

E-books promise users convenience and accessibility, but library e-book platforms contain so many barriers to use and access that patrons often turn away in frustration. In addition, aggregators’ e-book platforms often include intrusive, onerous digital rights management (DRM) restrictions. The traditional solution of DRM-free e-books are generally only available only in large and expensive publisher packages. One approach to solving these problems is an evidence-based selection of e-books program; it not only offers access to hundreds of DRM-free, unlimited simultaneous-user e-books that are integrated with similar e-journal content, but also includes an agreement that libraries will only purchase titles with …

Use And Cost Analysis Of E-Books: Patron-Driven Acquisitions Plan Vs. Librarian-Selected Titles, Suzanne M. Ward, Rebecca A. Richardson

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Many academic libraries have experimented with e-book patron-driven acquisitions (PDA) plans as small projects to test the concept of offering users thousands of titles, yet only paying for them as they are used. At the same time, many librarians continue traditional patterns of buying e-book titles the same way they bought print books for decades – purchasing titles based on their belief that these selections will be ones that local users need. This study shows that many librarian-selected e-book titles suffer the same fate as the traditional model of librarian-selected print books: many receive little or no use. The PDA …