Relative Preferences for Paper and for Electronic Books: Implications for Reference Services, Library Instruction, and Collection Management

The importance of leisure reading to health sciences students: results of a survey

“…Other surveys conducted from 2010 until 2013 made similar findings: most of Foasberg's respondents, and 85%, 74% and 88% of Baron's American, Japanese and German respondents, respectively, preferred reading longer pleasure reading texts in print rather than online . Rod‐Welch et al ., and Diers and Simpson also found that respondents preferred to do leisure reading in print format, although Walton found that while some students rarely use e‐books for leisure reading, others do enjoy leisure reading in electronic form . In the last 5 years, tablets, e‐readers and smart phones have become much more common; at the same time, many more sources of electronic books, magazines and newspapers have opened up.…”

Book or NOOK? Information behavior of academic librarians

“…These reasons are frequently mentioned in the literature on information technology adoption (Lopatovska et al, 2014;Staiger, 2012;Rod-Welch et al, 2013). Librarians believe students use digital texts for short segments of text, a behavior identified across all categories of academic users (Staiger, 2012) and among students specifically (Foasberg, 2014;Rod-Welch et al, 2013). Interestingly, participants mentioned far fewer reasons for students to prefer print than they mentioned for themselves, perhaps due to a belief that the younger generation has fewer difficulties with reading digital media.…”

“…In conjunction with this trend, the number of studies on information technology adoption in academia is also on the rise. Popular themes in technology adoption literature include information technology use, preferences of college students (Rod-Welch et al, 2013;Lopatovska et al, 2014;Foasberg, 2011) and faculty (Dodds et al, 2014;Mulholland and Bates, 2014) as well as issues pertaining to the development of digital collections and services (Dewan, 2012;Walters, 2013;Newman and Bui, 2010;Blummer, 2006). In an effort to understand the perspectives of those responsible for academic library offerings, several recent studies focussed on information behavior and technology use of academic librarians.…”

“…Vasileiou et al (2012) identified the need for librarians to offer e-book training for faculty as already provided at universities including the University of Tampere, which began both instructing library staff to use e-books and "training and motivating University staff to integrate e-books to teaching" in response to an increase in the size of their e-book collection (Ahlholm-Kannisto et al, 2014). Rod-Welch et al (2013) recommended a set of the strategies librarians can adopt in promoting the knowledge and use of e-books, including instructing users on finding and accessing e-books, using e-books during reference interviews, promoting the value of electronic formats and the unique features of e-books, and creating instructional e-book documents and videos for faculty. These strategies extended beyond e-books for general digital instruction (Lampert and Dabbour, 2008), and fulfill components of the Association of College and Research Libraries' Standards for Libraries in Higher Education Task Force (2012), including providing instruction, providing professional development for faculty, and keeping current with technological innovations.…”

“…Additional factors influencing students' uses of media were similar to the reasons librarians cited for their own information behavior, namely, content accessibility and convenience. These reasons are frequently mentioned in the literature on information technology adoption (Lopatovska et al, 2014;Staiger, 2012;Rod-Welch et al, 2013). Librarians believe students use digital texts for short segments of text, a behavior identified across all categories of academic users (Staiger, 2012) and among students specifically (Foasberg, 2014;Rod-Welch et al, 2013).…”