The Case for e-Book Literacy: Undergraduate Students' Experience with e-Books for Course Work

A very topical article from the J of Academic Librarianship  

The Case for e-Book Literacy: Undergraduate Students' Experience with e-Books for Course Work - one of the top 25 articles in the J of AL for Oct-Dec 2013

Some related articles:

 Usability evaluation of E-books 

 E-Books as Textbooks in the Classroom 

Not in Love, or Not in the Know? Graduate Student and Faculty Use (and Non-Use) of E-Books

Judge Sets Restrictions for Apple on E-Books

As punishment for engaging in an e-book price-fixing conspiracy, Apple will be forced to abide by new restrictions on its agreements with publishers and be evaluated by an external “compliance officer” for two years, a federal judge has ruled.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/business/media/judge-sets-final-restrictions-for-apple-on-e-books.html?ref=technology

Students Prefer Print but Not Books for Serious Academic Reading

The study, “Student Reading Practices in Print and Electronic Media,” to be published in September 2014 in the journal College & Research Libraries, tracked the reading habits of 17 CUNY students through diary entries, interviews, and discussion groups over the course of two weeks.

The research found that they almost always used e-book readers, mobile devices, and tablet computers for nonacademic reading but relied on paper printouts for academic reading.

Brave New World: eBooks Free With Ads

Brave New World: eBooksFree With Ads

"The Victorians gave us the Penny Press, Short form and episodic fiction, serialisation and book and pamphlet advertising. Some will suggest that today’s developing digital market can learn much from yesterday’s initial era of mass reading. Today we read of another ‘new’ Victorian‘ idea – the ebook with adverts. We see adverts on many digital services today. You have to suffer the pop-up 20 seconds, before they let you into where you want to go. Now www.eBookPlus.com , is introducing ebooks with adverts on a ‘with advertising it’s free’ model.  A service offer based on the premise that you will accept adverts at the front of the book and each chapter to get the content for free. Adverts in ebooks is going to happen, it is now a question of how it will happen and the implications of the change. We believe that no single platform will prevail and it is somewhat hard to see how it is a sustainable unique selling point. But what about the questions we need to ask ourselves? ..."

Canada: University Libraries in Nova Scotia Test eBook Sharing

A group of Nova Scotia university libraries is testing a new approach to ebook lending that offers unprecedented levels of access to students and faculty. Novanet – a consortium of 10 academic libraries founded in 1988 – has negotiated a new deal with publishers to allow the sharing of electronic books among libraries as freely as the sharing of print books. In a pilot project that began in November 2012, the member libraries deposited a total of $100,000 to access a shared collection of about 16,000 ebooks through vendor EBL.

Study of Unmediated Patron- Driven Acquisition of e-Books (thanks again to Brenda's Tweet!)

Give ’Em What They Want: A One-Year Study of Unmediated Patron-Driven Acquisition of e-Books
an ACRL article

Libraries, patrons, and e-books - Pew Report

Libraries, patrons, and e-books - Pew Report

Some comments from respondents:
"I am reading more because it is easy and accessible"
"...if I find myself with a free couple of minutes, I can read a couple of pages.”...:"
"I have always been a reader, but I’m reading more books now that I have an e-book reader, and I’m getting through them more quickly. … I find that my family members and I also spend more time discussing the books that we are reading..."
"I read a lot more with e-books. I’ve ventured out into new genres and authors that I would never have found in the print world..."
"“I read multiple books all the time. An audiobook for my car and commute. An e-book for ‘whenever’ and print books for relaxing at home...."
(librarian)  “I love the ecological benefit of not having the waste of needing to buy a lot of copies and then having to discard half of them two years later,” one library department head told us. “I love that we don’t have to hassle patrons to bring e-materials back. I love that there are no damages, no worn out items, no sticky stains.”

Academic eBooks and the User Experience (not an easy road!)

After our frustrating experience with the latest e-book we have purchased I found that the highlighted sentences (below) from  this article summed up my own feelings on e-books in the RU Library!
_______________________________________________________________________


"....With the price of textbooks rising, and institutions building their space in the online learning environment, it’s reasonable to expect an increase in the number of eTextbooks on our syllabi. For those institutions that purchase textbooks for reserves, the lending issue takes on an even more immediate concern. With Ingram’s VitalSource platform delivering 80,000 digital textbooks in 17 languages to 1.6 million students and faculty at 6000 campuses in 180 countries (according to The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections), we will need to figure out ways of making eBooks work in the academic research process more seamlessly.
We are ten years in to the eBook revolution and we’ve learned a lot. Unfortunately, most of the tools on the market are designed to silo users into a branded experience with a specific vendor-driven tool. Big companies have big reasons to keep users in their walled gardens. Being aware of the issues is one thing, but we, as academic librarians, need to find ways to ensure that the needs of the academic researcher do not get lost in the currently consumer-focused marketplace."

So what is an unglued ebook? (interesting initiative)

An unglued ebook is an already-published book that's been rereleased under a Creative Commons license, after obtaining permission and compensating the rights holder.

see this site 

Free quality e-books (+textbooks!) to download - bookboon.com

“While traditional book publishers are still struggling to find a viable business model for eBooks, bookboon.com is taking a different approach. With its free digital books it offers an alternative for the often unfairly-priced eBooks.

In South Africa, 200,000 books were downloaded in the last 12 months.” (Businesstech report)

Download free ebooks + no catch + no registration

“……Bookboon.com offers a huge range of over 1500 free quality eBooks for university students, business professionals and globe trotters. Our books can be downloaded directly in PDF format, and are currently available in seven languages for everyone around the world.

Books for university students Bookboon textbooks are focused and to the point, and we have books which address students at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Our main focus areas are business/economics, engineering/natural sciences and IT. We are also constantly expanding our range of subjects…”

“Over 800 textbooks written by professors   We currently offer over 800 textbooks. The books are in average around 200 pages long, and are being used as both primary and secondary literature.

All our books are written by highly respected professors from some of the best universities in the world and exclusively for bookboon.com”

E-books pose problems for presenting print reference material

"........Given how important reference material is to this sort of fiction, I find myself somewhat unimpressed by the way that the material is handled in Kindle—which is to say it’s handled poorly......."

JSTOR e-books program to launch in mid-2012.

Books at JSTOR: announced in January 2011, is an offshoot of JSTOR, which worked closely with eight university press partners to develop the initial plans for the online scholarly book program. The eight have now expanded to 30 partners. More than 15,000 monographs from the press partners (front and backlist titles) will be fully cross-searchable with JSTOR journal content.

Moving Beyond the NetLibrary Legacy, EBSCO Reshapes Its Ebook Platform

(Library Journal is presenting a series of articles called Exploring Ebook Options that takes an indepth look at some of the ebook platforms that are now in the marketplace. The series, which is focusing primarily on the public library market, has so far provided an ebook primer for libraries just starting out with downloadable media as well as profiles of  Baker & Taylor’s Axis 360 and Library Ideas’ Freading. This story examines  Ebooks on EBSCOhost, which has strong academic and corporate roots but is becoming more attractive to public libraries as well.)

Unpacking books

E-books have matured but questions remain about digital rights, access models and what a scholarly e-book really means today

 "The biggest challenge for e-books is that a lot of people don’t interpret e as electronic but as another format for print."