Literature review

E-books, as one type of digital resources, have been moving slowly into library collections. According to the Library Journal’s Academic Library Book Buying Survey in 2001, only about 1 per cent of their materials budget went toward the purchase of e-books – a figure they expected to rise slightly to 3 per cent by 2004 (Albanese, 2001). The situation at the University of Texas at Austin (UT at Austin) appears more like an exception than a common practice, where over 20,000 e-book titles have become available to the institution’s users since the beginning of Fall 2000 (Dillon, 2001a). Statistics about e-book acquisitions in other kinds of libraries are not seen reported in publications.

E-books initially seemed to be produced mainly for individual users, as suggested by the requirements that e-book publishers set (e.g. a separate e-mail account for each e-book purchase and credit card as payment method). Consequently, e-book publishers have been interested in learning individuals’ opinions about e-books. Hilts (2000) reported, for example, that Seybold[1] sent out 33,000 questionnaires in 2000 to those who attended its 1999 e-book shows in San Francisco and Boston. A total of 2,880 people completed the questionnaire. 1Of the respondents, 15 per cent had read an e-book in some form before filling out the survey. Only 12 per cent counted themselves as likely to purchase an e-book and read it on a computer, a personal digital assistant (PDA) or a dedicated e-book reader. In addition, 66 per cent of the respondents said that they were “not likely” to buy an e-book in the next 12 months, including 40 per cent of those who had already read an e-book. More than 45 per cent were interested in reading maps and travel guides on a PDA or Palm, but only 12 per cent wanted recreational or fiction books. The last finding, however, should not sound surprising given the fact that Seybold attendees are usually from publishing, computer science and other related fields (Hilts, 2000).

While the e-book usage reported in the Seybold survey is low, the e-book usage statistics provided by Dillon (2001a) indicated that over 70 per cent of the e-book titles UT Austin purchased were used. The most heavily used e-book subjects and titles tend to be in economics and business, computer science, and medicine and health as these subjects all lend to themselves to the quick reference style look-ups that e-books do well. In a study conducted in 1988 on nonfiction use by academic library users, the researchers found that 23.2 per cent of the Ohio State University users: needed the books for school, read one-fourth of the book or less, and used the table of contents or book index to find information (Prabha, 1988). Thus, nonfiction books seem like appropriate candidates for electronic access, if directed at this type of user. It appears that the subject and content of e-books, to some degree, determine how heavily they will be used.

In analyzing the feasibility of using e-books in academic, school and public libraries in Rochester, New York, Gibbons (2001) reported that 67 per cent of her subjects read one or more works on a reader. Yet no one complained about any eyestrain. Gibbons (2001) also described that the potential of e-books as a teaching tool was not generally overlooked by the educators at both the secondary and higher education levels. Multimedia textbooks, texts hyperlinked to a bilingual dictionary to assist “English as a second language” students, and synchronized audio and text to aid with low reading comprehension are all possible classroom applications of e-books. Unfortunately, mainstream popular fiction and nonfiction remain the main focus of e-books.

While not particularly focusing on e-book usage, Sainsbury (1996) summarized, among others, the following key findings of a discussion of children’s use of electronic and audio books in the UK. First, there is no indication that the printed book is dead or dying. Electronic books are unlikely to replace printed books. This finding is later echoed by Sottong (1999) when he wrote that “the best display technology can’t beat print on paper”. Second, boys exhibit a stronger tendency than girls to use electronic texts. Third, electronic fiction is currently read less by adolescents than by younger children. The discussion is based on a questionnaire organized by Blueprint, a market research company specializing in children’s products.

As shown in the key findings, this discussion not only examined book format (e.g. electronic vs. print) but also readers’ gender and age group – two dimensions not covered in other studies. Several reasons for the dislike of equipment-based e-books were also identified. These include unreliable hardware, expense, migraines or eyestrain caused by screen-work, and poor quality of electronic books (Sainsbury, 1996).

In a recently published monograph, Sellen and Harper (2002) pointed out that paper has “affordances” or a unique set of qualities that permit specific kinds of uses. Paper is tangible, can be shuffled, sorted, annotated, spread out, and quickly scanned. In comparison, digital documents can easily be searched, shared, stored, accessed remotely, and linked to other relevant material. But will the digital format replace the paper one? The answer seems to be “no” according to Sellen and Harper (2002) because digital documents lack the affordances paper has. Similar reasoning might be made when the value and future of e-books and printed books are compared.

Both Weardon (1998) and Dillon (2001b) described the features and values of e-books. But one major point the existing literature did not address is what makes people to decide whether they would use e-books, especially in this critical point of time. The current study intends to identify and explore factors that affect people’s e-book usage based on data from a questionnaire.