Evidence Summary
Longitudinal Analysis of Undergraduate E-book Use Finds that Knowledge
of Local Communities Drives Format Selection and Collection Development
Activities
A Review of:
Hobbs, K., & Klare, D. (2016). Are we
there yet?: A longitudinal look at e-books through students’ eyes. Journal of Electronic Resources
Librarianship, 28(1), 9-24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1941126X.2016.1130451
Reviewed by:
Melissa Goertzen
Collection Development Analysis & Support
Librarian
Columbia University Libraries
New York, New York, United States of America
Email: mjg2227@columbia.edu
Received: 12 Oct. 2016 Accepted: 17 Jan.
2017
2017 Goertzen.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons‐Attribution‐Noncommercial‐Share Alike License 4.0 International
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial
purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the
same or similar license to this one.
Abstract
Objective – To determine undergraduate students’
opinions of, use of, and facility with e-books.
Design – A qualitative study that incorporated
annual interview and usability sessions over a period of four years. The
protocol was informed by interview techniques used in prior studies at Wesleyan
University. To supplement the body of qualitative data, the 2014 Measuring
Information Service Outcomes (MISO) survey was distributed; the researchers
built five campus-specific e-book questions into the survey.
Setting – A small
university in the Northeastern United States of America.
Subjects – 28
undergraduate students (7 per year) who attended summer session between the
years of 2011-2014 recruited for interview and usability sessions; 700
full-time undergraduate students recruited for the 2014 MISO survey.
Methods – The method
was designed by a library consortium in the Northeastern United States of
America. The study itself was conducted by two librarians based at the single
university. To recruit students for interview and usability sessions,
librarians sent invitations via email to a random list of students enrolled in
the university’s summer sessions. Recruitment for the 2014 MISO survey was also
conducted via email; the survey was sent to a stratified, random sample of
undergraduate students in February 2014.
Interview sessions were structured around five open-ended questions that
examined students’ familiarity with e-books and whether the format supports
academic work. These sessions were followed by the students’ evaluation of
specific book titles available on MyiLibrary and
ebrary, platforms accessible to all libraries in the CTW Consortium.
Participants were asked to locate e-books on given topics, answer two research
questions using preselected e-books, explain their research process using the
above mentioned platforms, and comment on the overall usability experience.
Instead of taking notes during interview and usability sessions, the
researchers recorded interviews and captured screen activity. Following
sessions, they watched recordings, took notes independently, and compared notes
to ensure salient points were captured.
Due to concerns that a small pool of interview and usability candidates
might not capture the overall attitude of students towards e-books, the
researchers distributed the 2014 MISO survey between the third and fourth
interview years. Five additional campus-specific e-book questions were
included. The final response rate was 33%.
Main
Results – The results of the
interviews, usability studies, and MISO survey suggest that although students
use print and electronic formats for complementary functions, 86% would still
select print if they had to choose between the formats. Findings indicate that
e-books promote discovery and convenient access to information, but print
supports established and successful study habits, such as adding sticky notes
to pages or creating annotations in margins. With that being said, most
students do not attempt to locate one specific format over another. Rather,
their two central concerns are that content is relevant to search terms and the
full-text is readily available.
Study findings also suggest that students approach content through the
lens of a particular assignment. Regardless of format, they want to get in,
locate specific information, and move on to the next source. Also, students
want all sources – regardless of format – readily at hand and arranged in
personal organization systems. PDF files were the preferred electronic format
because they best support this research behaviour;
content can be arranged in filing systems on personal devices or printed when
necessary. Because of these research habits, digital rights management (DRM)
restrictions created extreme frustration and were said to impede work. In some
cases, students created workarounds for the purpose of accessing information in
a usable form. This included visiting file sharing sites like Pirate Bay in
order to locate DRM free content.
Findings demonstrated a significant increase in student e-book use over
the course of four years. However, this trend did not correspond to increased
levels of sophistication in e-book use or facility with build-in functions on
e-book platforms. The researchers discovered that students create workarounds
instead of seeking out menu options that save time in the long run. This behaviour was consistent across the study group regardless
of individual levels of experience working with e-books. Students commented
that additional features slow down work rather than creating efficiency. For
instance, when keyboard shortcuts used to copy and paste text did not function,
students preferred to type out a passage rather than spend time searching for
copy functions available on the e-book platform.
Conclusion – Academic e-books continue to evolve
in a fluid and dynamic environment. While the researchers saw improvements over
the course of four years (e.g., fewer DRM restrictions) access barriers remain,
such as required authentication to access platform content. They also
identified areas where training sessions lead by librarians could demonstrate
how e-books support student research and learning activities.
The researchers also found that user experiences are local in nature and
specific to campus cultures and expectations. They concluded that knowledge of
local user communities should drive book format selection. Whenever possible,
libraries should provide access to multiple formats to support a variety of
learning needs and research behaviours.
Commentary
Dozens of studies published over the last decade have focused on e-book
use, particularly at the undergraduate level. While the study at hand supports
what was previously known – students scan texts for key concepts (Hernon, Hopper, Leach, Saunders & Zhang, 2007), lack a
general awareness of platform functionalities (Cassidy, Martinez & Shen,
2012), and express frustrations with DRM restrictions (Hyman, Moser & Segala, 2014) – it does include a unique feature that
brings value to the information profession: a methodology for conducting a
longitudinal analysis that explores the research behaviours
of local user communities.
Because the study conclusions emphasized the importance of understanding
local research behaviours, the inclusion of the full
protocol in the appendix adds significant value to the paper. This, combined
with the researchers’ descriptions of recruitment techniques and how the
methodology was executed over a period of four years, provides a detailed
roadmap that librarians can adopt or customize in order to document the e-book
landscape at their home institution.
Although the methodology was certainly of interest, the organization and
presentation of study results diminished the overall strength of the paper.
Although three methods were used to collect data, the researchers lump all
findings together and attempt to discuss them at once. At times it was
difficult to determine if a discussion was informed by results of the interview
sessions, usability tests, survey, or a combination. It would have been
interesting to read the results of each method separately, followed by a
discussion of observed trends across the entire data set.
To add to the above mentioned point, it seemed
that a discussion of MISO survey results was largely omitted from the paper.
Although the researchers state that survey results did not reflect findings
from interview sessions and usability tests, they did not explain how or why.
This discrepancy is one of the most interesting aspects of the study findings
and it would have been fascinating to learn more about the researchers’
thoughts and observations. It also seemed like a missed opportunity to present
research questions for future study.
Despite these limitations, the paper demonstrates how to document local
attitudes and research needs surrounding e-book collections. The researchers
gathered interesting sentiments regarding e-book experiences; one thought that
stood out was that “the e-books we were testing seem to be designed not to be
misused rather than to be used” (Hobbs & Klare,
2016, p. 13). Insights such as this can inform how funds are allocated,
services are developed, and materials are selected at individual institutions.
In the future, it would be interesting to run the study across a group of
libraries within a consortium to examine how user attitudes and behaviours compare across collecting groups.
References
Cassidy, E.
D., Martinez, M., & Shen, L. (2012). Not in love, or not in the know?
Graduate student and faculty use (and non-use) of e-books. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 38(6), 326-332. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2012.08.005
Hayman, J.
A., Moser, M. T., & Segala, L. N. (2014).
Electronic reading and digital library technologies: Understanding learner
expectation and usage intent for mobile learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 62(1), 35-52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11423-013-9330-5
Hernon, P.,
Hooper, R., Leach, M., Saunders, L.,& Zhang, J.
(2007). E-book use by students: Undergraduates in economics, literature, and
nursing. The Journal of Academic Librarianship,
33(1), 3-13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2006.08.005
Hobbs, K.,
& Klare, D. (2016). Are we there yet?: A
longitudinal look at e-books through students’ eyes. Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship, 28(1), 9-24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1941126X.2016.1130451