Electronic books: viewpoints from users and potential users
| Published date | 01 September 2003 |
| Pages | 340-346 |
| Date | 01 September 2003 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07378830310494526 |
| Author | Heting Chu |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Electronic books:
viewpoints from users
and potential users
Heting Chu
Introduction
Although the first e-book, Dynabooks, was
envisioned by Alan Kay in 1968 (Kay, 2000),
the public as well as the market did not
experience the e-book surge until the turn of
last century. During that period of time, e-book
readers as we know today aggressively entered
the market. Companies solely devoted to
publishing and delivering computer-based
e-books, e.g. netLibrary, were founded.
Software (e.g. Acrobat's CoolType and
Microsoft's ClearType) for offering quality
display of e-books has also been developed. An
increasing number of e-book titles became
available to the public. Few people doubted
then that e-books would have a future as bright
or brighter than e-journals.
However, the e-book boom lasted for less
than two years when the American economy
and financial market began showing downward
signs. As a result, the year of 2001 became
tough for e-books. For example, newly created
e-book divisions within large publishing
companies such as Random House were closed.
The well-known e-book provider netLibrary
went into free-fall (Hawkins, 2002). The
development and adoption of e-books are
inevitably affected by what has been happening
in the e-book world. It is natural for libraries as
well as individuals to question whether e-books
will survive this difficult time and if they will
revive in the future when the right time comes.
Despite the external and negative factors
described above, the well-being and future
perspective of e-books depend largely on
e-books themselves. Therefore, a questionnaire
survey was conducted to find out what made
individuals use or not use e-books during this
transition.
Literature review
E-books, as one type of digital resources, have
been moving slowly into library collections.
According to the Library Journal's Academic
Library Book Buying Survey in 2001, only
about 1 per cent of their materials budget went
toward the purchase of e-books ± a figure they
expected to rise slightly to 3 per cent by 2004
(Albanese, 2001). The situation at the
The author
Heting Chu is Associate Professor at Palmer School of
Library & Information Science, Long Island University/CW
Post Campus, Brookville, New York, USA.
Keywords
Electronic books, User studies, Software tools, Surveys,
United States of America, Search engines
Abstract
A questionnaire survey was distributed among 27 students
at a library and information science school in the USA to
find out what users and potential users think about e-books
in this transition period, when the US economy has
experienced downtime, and the e-book world cannot see
profitability in its business as predicted. Among the 27
survey participants, a third of them have used e-books in
the past, mostly reading computer-based e-books without
special readers. ``Available around the clock'' and
``searchable'' are both chosen and ranked as the most
important reasons. Those who have never used e-books
mainly think that ebooks are ``hard to read and browse'' or
``need special equipment''. However, about half of the
non-users of e-books plan to examine some e-book titles in
the future.
Electronic access
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0737-8831.htm
340
Library Hi Tech
Volume 21 .Number 3 .2003 .pp. 340-346
#MCB UP Limited .ISSN 0737-8831
DOI 10.1108/07378830310494526
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