Introduction

Although the first e-book, Dynabooks, was envisioned by Alan Kay in 1968 (Kay, 2000), the public as well as the market did not experience the e-book surge until the turn of last century. During that period of time, e-book readers as we know today aggressively entered the market. Companies solely devoted to publishing and delivering computer-based e-books, e.g. netLibrary, were founded. Software (e.g. Acrobat’s CoolType and Microsoft’s ClearType) for offering quality display of e-books has also been developed. An increasing number of e-book titles became available to the public. Few people doubted then that e-books would have a future as bright or brighter than e-journals.

However, the e-book boom lasted for less than two years when the American economy and financial market began showing downward signs. As a result, the year of 2001 became tough for e-books. For example, newly created e-book divisions within large publishing companies such as Random House were closed. The well-known e-book provider netLibrary went into free-fall (Hawkins, 2002). The development and adoption of e-books are inevitably affected by what has been happening in the e-book world. It is natural for libraries as well as individuals to question whether e-books will survive this difficult time and if they will revive in the future when the right time comes.

Despite the external and negative factors described above, the well-being and future perspective of e-books depend largely on e-books themselves. Therefore, a questionnaire survey was conducted to find out what made individuals use or not use e-books during this transition.