Research Libraries Embrace E-Books

[TeamCA]

The Chronicle of Higher Education (May 30, 2008) reports that almost 70% of research libraries plan to increase spending on ebooks, with non-US libraries more likely to adopt ebooks. The problem is not complex charts and color photos but copyright issues holding back publishers, according to the comments.

Excerpt from "Library Use of E-books":

More than half of all patrons reported either extensive or significant use of e-reference books, and nearly a quarter of the college libraries in the sample reported that their patrons used e-books quite extensively. ... Fiction e-books were not used extensively and close to 71% of libraries said that they were used little. Less than 10% reported extensive or significant use of fiction e-books.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by TeamCA

The problem is not complex charts and color photos but copyright issues holding back publishers, according to the comments.

Not surprising... in fact, goes well with this NYT article thread.

[Studio717]

I've been using many of the public domain PDFs from Google Books (and a few from Internet Archive) for my research, books that I could access no other way.

The older the book (or item, such as a pamphlet or manuscript), the more reason to digitize it, imo. They are often fragile due to their age, or so rare, that many libraries have held their holdings so close that very few could actually access them.

Once those books, etc., are digitized, then most can be preserved even more efficiently since accessibility will not be required by any but those who are researching the physical form itself. The information contained in the item will be available to many more people, though this will challenge the nature of academic libraries' 'ownership' - control of which is something a few out there are not willing to give up.