2016 Charleston Library Conference

Academic libraries in the U.S. have witnessed the impressive growth of acquiring e-books. While publishers, vendors, and librarians are still developing and exploring various models of e-book production, service, and acquisition, we approach issues surrounding e-book adoption, usage, and right restrictions by investigating their end users. In this session, we will report findings from a research project that studies undergraduate students' interests, attitudes, and expectations toward e-books accessible via an academic library website. This research includes a questionnaire survey with both closed and open-ended questions, which was administered to 279 undergraduate students (mostly freshmen and sophomore) in a large university in the South.

Attendees of the session can expect to learn about a range of user-related issues. For example, what functions and features of e-books do students consider most important? What are less important? What DRM restrictions are acceptable or unacceptable to these young college students? What are their experiences of and expectations for using e-books licensed by academic libraries? These issues are interesting to multiple audiences: academic librarians can understand their users better and learn new ways of educating users and promoting the usage of e-books; and publishers and vendors can gain a better knowledge of their end users, which may help them design, develop, and produce information products that are more appropriate for young academic users.

This session is co-authored by Kanchan Deosthali, Assistant Professor, College of Business, University of Mary Washington, and Devendra Potnis, Associate Professor, School of Information Sciences, University of Tennessee - Knoxville, and Rebecca McCusker, SIS Master's Studennt, University of Tennessee, who were unable to attend the conference.