Survey points to high growth in eBooks over the next year
NetLibrary, OCLC's eContent division last month conducted a survey among 300 libraries in the UK and Holland to gauge perceptions and usage of eBooks currently and going forward. The research signalled significant planned increases in the acquisition of eBooks in both the academic and public library sectors over the next year.
Of those UK survey respondents three-quarters of academic libraries and half of public libraries indicated an intention to buy more eBooks in the next 12 months. These percentages are reversed when applied to Dutch survey responses; with half of academic libraries and almost three quarters of public libraries in Holland indicating that their acquisition of eBooks will increase in 2009.
Other key themes born out of the survey findings provide valuable insights into what is driving usage and decisions on eBook collection development in European libraries.
A massive 85% of UK and 67% of Dutch public library respondents to the survey stated that they were most interested in developing fiction eBook collections. This is despite recent research suggesting eBooks are most often used for reference purposes. Possibly this trend is being fuelled by the growth in take up and availability of eBook reading devices among public library users such as Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader. Similarly a rise in the usage of MP3 players could be attributed to the fact that 65% of UK and 67% of Dutch publics also highlighted their intention to further develop their eAudiobook collections:
"eAudibooks are an area of significant interest to NetLibrary" explains Michelle Harper, Global Product Manager for eBooks and eAudiobooks, "The release of our new Media Center application will support libraries in the promotion of eAudiobooks to users. It's a free application that will make it faster and easier for your users to search, manage, and listen to NetLibrary eAudiobooks through a range of devices".
Of the academic libraries who responded to the survey, half of those in the UK claim that their use of eBooks is to support core reading lists in various subject areas – the main ones being Business / Management (13%), Medicine / Health (9%), Education (6%) and Engineering (5%).
Supporting core reading lists is also attributed as the main reason of acquiring eBooks by half of the Dutch academic survey respondents, however, the main subjects of interest in Holland were shown to be History (9%), Business (7%), Law (7%) and Technology (7%).
Michelle Harper continues: 'NetLibrary offers a range of bundled titles in these subject areas. Our custom collection service also provides titles specifically tailored to your library's collection development requirements'.
Anyone interested in hearing more about the results of this survey or how NetLibrary can help them in their collection development should contact uk@oclc.org.
The winner of the Sony eBook reader was: Lisa Haddow at Stirling University Library