First, Christopher Warnock and company at ebrary have released the results of their Global Faculty eBook Study. Interesting reading for sure but remember this report was funded by ebrary.

You can read a summary here (PDF) and request the full text (free) here.

From the summary:

“ebrary has personally learned a number of things from this survey, which we intend to apply to our business going forward,” said Kevin Sayar, President and Co-founder of ebrary. “For example, 57 percent of respondents indicated that students do not know how to use electronic resources provided by the library, and nearly 28 percent stated that there is not enough instruction in how to use electronic resources. Providing better and more comprehensive training is definitely one area in which ebrary can help librarians, faculty and students alike, and we will be rolling out a new global training program later this month.”

We’re looking forward to seeing the training program. Of course, it’s one thing to have a training program and something else for people to use it/study it. You first have to get people to use the program. We also will be looking to see if ebrary will market directly to students and faculty. In other words an ad might read, “did you know that your library offers x and x. It’s available from your dorm room, office, etc. 24x.7.”

• Approximately 50 percent of respondents indicated they prefer using online resources for research, class preparation, and instruction versus 18 percent who prefer print resources.

• Eighty-five percent of respondents viewed information literacy as very necessary, compared to 15 percent who stated it is somewhat necessary and less than 1 percent who find it unnecessary.

• Almost an equal number of faculty members require students to use electronic resources as print for course assignments.

• Fifty-three percent of respondents indicated that Google and other search engines are powerful tools for finding information. Twenty-nine percent indicated Google and other search engines are more useful tools than the print resources provided by the library, compared to 11 percent who indicated they are more useful than library-provided electronic resources.

FINALLY, don’t forget that ebrary continues to provide the ebrary Discover service. It’s completely free to search and also read more than 20,000 books online in many subject areas. Users only pay to copy or print a page. ebrary Discover is also an interesting pricing model.
1) Register for Service
2) Put a minimum of $5.00 on a credit card, this is ONLY used if you print/copy a page.
3) Download the ebrary reader.
4) Search, browse, read.

Of course, many libraries of all types also provide free access to other full text book services including:
+ Books24×7
+ Safari Tech Books
+ NetLibrary

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 10th, 2007 at 12:59 am and is filed under E-books, Online Education, Resources for Educators, Source File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.