I love reports that provide a little more information about the state of digital resources. This survey was conducted by HighWire Press which is a division of Stanford University Libraries. I don't know that the results are particularly surprising, but it is a validation of the trend in growth of ebooks.
I think this is particularly interesting to those of us who love new technology and are currently pining for a ebook reader (that would be me and I won't be brand specific). The key takeaways from the report that are located in the Executive Summary are:
- Simplicity and ease fo use are features that are value by librarians, over and above more sophisticated end-user features.
- Traditional sources of book discovery continue to be important for ebooks as well. They believe that users discover ebooks through the library catalog and through Internet search engines.
- Participants indicated that users prefer ebooks in PDF format, but as one participant stated, format preference will change as technology changes.
- Digital rights management is the single most important factor that hinders ebook use for library patrons.
- Purchase with perpetual access is the most acceptable business model for ebooks, with 83 percent of participants indicating that this model is very acceptable. However, significant numbers of participants indicated that other very different models are also acceptable.
I think that a great companion piece of research would be the verification of librarian viewpoints through an extensive survey of librarian patrons and their ebook usage. It has probably been done and I will look into that next
The full report is available at: HighWire Study: 2009 Librarian eBook Survey
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