When academia goes "E"
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Poster presented at BOBCATSSS “Information in E-motion” 23-25 January 2012 Amsterdam, The Netherlands .More here: http://ebookstromso.wordpress.com/
![A Case Study of Tromsø University Library WHEN ACADEMIA GOES «E» by Adina Ciocoiu, Ewelina Melnarowicz and Live Kvale Tromsø University Library (TUL) announced in August 2011 their intention to only buy electronic books rather than on paper. The main reason behind this decision was the observation that the users prefer having instant access to academic material, but the institution made no preliminary studies to confirm this assumption. As the topic is on the edge of time, a case study was developed. The questionnaire created to support it aimed at determining respondents’ approaches to using e-books and to know their opinions on the library’s decision. It was carried out during 8 weeks in the autumn 2011 and made available on the library website as well as handed out on paper. ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],E-BOOKS IN TROMSØ UNIVERSITY ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],UiT Tromsø University The largest groups of respondents were Master students (20) and researchers (15). In these two groups we found that 60% of the Master students and 80% of the researchers answering use e-books. This indicates that the usage of e-books increases gradually with the academic level. This assumptions is supported by the fact that 70% of the 10 PhD students use e-books while only 37,5% of the 8 Bachelor students who replied to the survey use e-books… … one third of the respondents prefer e-books for academic purposes. The most represented group is from the faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education, whereas individuals from the faculties of Health Science, Science and Technology form a greater number of active users of academic e-books, about 80% declared to use e-books. Half of those who use e-books prefer them for academic work, about one third prefer paper and the rest are neutral…. … related to e-book features, availability 24/7 is clearly the most important as nearly all e-book users rated it as very relevant (75%) and relevant (20,5%); Masters students rated 24/7 availability as very relevant (7) and relevant (5), whereas researchers rated it mostly as very relevant (10 out of 12). Other highly appreciated features are full-text searching, browsing and navigation possibilities… … for 33% of the library users who did not use e-books, the preference for paper books was their main reason not to use e-books. Second came the fact that the users did not know about this option and other reasons included comments on e-books as being "to complicated" but also users who "just started using a kindle" or "just haven't got around to looking into e-books yet". The number of respondents who did not use e-books was too low to be able to make any theories about which faculty or educational is more or less positive about e-books. However option nr 2 was used more frequently among Bachelor students. The results on the non users gives us reason to believe that the number of e-book users is constantly increasing once the students get familiar and learn how to use them…. ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],TROMSØ NORWAY Health Sciences Law Fine Arts Biosciences Social Sciences and Education Fisheries and Economics Humanities Science and Technology](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/whenacademiagoesev7-120128044807-phpapp02/85/When-academia-goes-E-1-320.jpg)
Poster presented at BOBCATSSS “Information in E-motion” 23-25 January 2012 Amsterdam, The Netherlands .More here: http://ebookstromso.wordpress.com/
