1. e-books - essentials or extras:
The University of Auckland Library
experience
Ksenija Obradovic
LIANZA Conference 2004

2. Overview
 experience of the University of
Auckland Library in implementing e-
books into the learning environment
 perception of e-books by staff and
students

3. Definition of e-book
 “e-book” - monographic piece of text
made available electronically,
regardless of size and composition
 no difference between digitized vs. born
digital; parallel published vs. born-
digital; linear text vs. hypertext; straight
text vs. value added text

4. Access
 Data Bases
 LEARN Course pages
 Voyager Library catalogue

5. e-books holdings added per year
2004 5158
2003 76799
2002 4404
2001 5258
2000 29
1999 3
1998 279
Total e-book holdings: 91930
This data for this report was created 8/31/2004

6. Sources of bibliographic
records
 buy records from vendors
 add 856 to existing hard copy record
 create record for e-book

7. Access from Voyager
 purchased e-books (e.g. netLibrary,
ebrary, Oxford Reference Online)
 free fulltext electronic versions of
monographs
 electronic information supplementary to
the printed book

8. Links are not added to:
 any e-versions which are available free
for a limited period only
 pages which have links to Word or
zipped files
 Tables of Contents, Publishers' web
sites, Overviews of the book (but not
deleted any from imported records)

11. Some issues related to managing
e-books
 no bibliographical control
 vendor does not inform us when e-
books are no longer available
 receipt of e-books and bibliographical
records does not necessarily coincide

12. netLibrary and ebrary
 total of 6,794 netLibrary titles and
11,915 ebrary titles
 two different models

13. netLibrary user sessions
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Month
usersession
2001
2002
2003
2004

14. ebrary user sessions
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
4500
Jan
Feb
M
ar
Apr
M
ay
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
O
ct
Nov
Dec
usersessions
2002
2003
2004

15. netLibrary user sessions by topic
for July
 Business & Economics 938
 Computers 697
 Social Sciences 77
 Education 33
 Medicine 31
 Language & linguistics 30
 Literature 28
 Arts 25
 Political Science 22

16. ebrary usage by topic for July
User Sessions Pages viewed
 Computers 428 7840
 Business & Economics 376 4938
 History 114 1272
 Science 109 787
 Medical 96 1144
 Social Science 79 900
 Language arts 62 716
 Literary criticism 49 282

17. Targeted groups
 Library staff
 Students enrolled in the e-book course
 Students based in the North Shore
campus

18. Methods of accessing
 Staff – mostly use Voyager
 North Shore based students prefer
LEARN course pages
 E-book course group are divided: the
North Shore based respondents prefer
LEARN course pages, while the others
show preference to Voyager catalogue

19. Print vs. electronic
 all three groups prefer print to electronic
version
 ratios of preference vary: two thirds of staff
and e-book course students prefer print
version; however among North Shore
students, print version is preferred by a small
margin
 In all three groups some participants
indicated that they do not have a preference,
and the choice would depend on the situation

20. Reasons to choose print:
 Easier to read
 More familiar
 No time limit
 Can mark important lines
 Can read on the bus
 Too long to download big bits of books
 E-books too slow
 Easier to look through
 Getting out of the house

21. Reasons to choose electronic:
 Availability
 A few people can access it at the same
time
 I don’t have to carry the books around

22. Importance of the e-book
features
 Access anytime, anywhere is regarded as
very important by majority of course students,
and by almost all staff
 Access to key reference materials and
definitions as one reads the e-book is valued
more by library staff than by course and North
Shore students
 All three groups assume that elements such
as animation or video are of little importance.
However, students find them more useful
than library staff

23. Importance of the e-book
features, 2
 Ability to print content is regarded as very
important by majority of students and staff
 All three groups are polarised in their
preference for electronic version resembling
printed – some really like it, some do not care
at all
 Almost all library staff rate access to
searchable content as very important. Some
students agree, but not all.

24. Copyright restrictions
 all staff aware
 about one third of students not aware

25. Frequency of use
 Staff - more often than the other two groups
 North Shore based students and Course
students - usually once a month or less than
that. Only a few respondents said that they
use e-books more than once a week
 However, asked if they would like more e-
books in their subject areas, majority of all
three groups answered yes

26. Other comments:
 e-books are great for quick facts but a
real pain to read page after page
 e-books are incredibly useful for titles
that are in high-usage
 e-books enable searching across the
whole collection, not just one book

27. Other comments, 2:
 e-books instead of Short Loan copies
 e-books give students a good start if
recommended text not available
 A few students commented that thanks
to the questionnaire their awarenes of
e-books had been raised

28. The general impression
 printed and e-book have their place in
academic libraries
 in many instances print is desirable
format - users often browse e-book to
see if it is useful, and then get printed
copy for a more substantial reading
 e-books provide another level of library
service

29. Future
 use of e-books relies on Subject
Librarians incorporating them into
their collections
 also relies on publishers providing
more recommended texts and further
exploring the possibilities that
electronic text could offer to libraries