Do Off-Campus Students Use E-Books?

The number of electronic books (e-books) that are available is increasing rapidly. Libraries are acquiring them individually, in large groups, and as part of collections. Off-Campus librarians perceive them to be the best solution to the problems and expenses related to loaning and shipping print books to off-campus students. This study looks at the usage of e-books by off-campus students at Central Michigan University to see if usage patterns can assist librarians with ebook collection development to support off-campus programs. Introduction Electronic books (e-books) are those that are the equivalent of a print book in a digital format. They are read on a computer or other digital reader. The benefits of e-books are that they can be searched quickly and easily for specific information and that, when owned or leased by a library, can be available 24/7, whether the library is open or not. Some drawbacks to e-books include needing to have an electronic reader and being restricted to certain limitations in printing, downloading, or time available by the publisher. The growth in the number of books sold electronically has increased dramatically in recent years. Wholesale e-book sales have risen from under $2 million per quarter in 2002 to nearly $8 million per quarter in 2007 (International Digital Publishing Forum, n.d.). Libraries have been adding e-books to their collections for a decade or more. Many of the early acquisitions of e-books were as part of a package from a publisher or as part of a consortial shared collection. In recent years, libraries have been able to select ebooks on a case-by-case basis; however, the cost of an individual e-book is often more expensive than the cost of the equivalent print book. Building a strong e-book collection in a library that supports distance learners is very attractive to off-campus librarians. They have long struggled with several issues related to loaning print books to their users. Print books have to be shipped in some way and are subject to the vagaries of postal and other delivery systems. Students in the United States can wait up to a week to receive books and the time may be much longer for students in other countries where shipments may be held up in Customs and delivery systems may not be reliable. In addition, books can be expensive to ship. Also, students may not ship books back when they are due and books may be lost or damaged in transit, necessitating staff time to resolve overdue and lost issues If a library can provide a comprehensive e-book collection to off-campus users, the challenges associated with shipping, costs, delays and customs regulations when sending to other countries should disappear. Yet how can librarians discover whether off-campus students would use e-books before they spend significant amounts of acquisitions budgets on them? One way may be to investigate current offcampus use of e-books. Several recent studies have been conducted on usage patterns for e-books in academic libraries. For the most part, they do not specifically investigate usage among off-campus users in a large distance learning program. This study will investigate that usage in light of the following questions. Do students in off-campus programs use e-books more than the general population? Is usage more prominent in some disciplines? How can this data be used to inform future collection development policy for e-books? Purchasing e-books is generally more costly than acquiring their print counterparts. E-book platforms vary and their use is restricted to the availability of electronic reading devices. Yet, e-books