Thursday, January 17, 2013

Perspectives on the future of e-books in libraries in universities

This article reports research into the perceptions and predictions of academic librarians regarding the future role and development of e-books, and e-book collections and services.  A number of recent studies reported in the literature review indicate increasing interest in e-books.  Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 academic librarians, in seven case study libraries.  Most interviewees anticipated a significant growth in the size and role of e-book collections in academic libraries over the next five years.  The actions and policies of each of the key stakeholder groups, e-book vendors (publishers and aggregators), academic libraries and users are viewed as pivotal to the future use of e-books in universities.  The growing importance of e-books will have a number of consequences for academic libraries, in terms of the technologies that they make available to users, the use of library space, user education and staff workload.

Please see the full text of the article at http://lis.sagepub.com/content/44/4/217











No comments: