E-books could transform teaching and study. Collections are growing but no in-depth users studies have been carried out. Chris Armstrong, Ray Lonsdale and Dave Nicholas introduce the SuperBook Project which aims to put that right.
E-books have burst quietly on to the scene with little of the fanfare surrounding other e-resources – both earlier formats (e-journals) and the more recent (blogs). E-book publishing has been growing fast. The International Digital Publishing Forum1 reports a 23 per cent increase in e-book revenues in 2005 compared to 2004 and a 20 per cent increase in e-book titles published year-on-year. And aggregator initiatives, as well as not inconsiderable attention from all sectors of the library world (NetLibrary now boasts more than 100,000 titles and has been licensed by two major UK consortia as well as many individual libraries), attest to the format’s viability.
Little research
Initiatives by Google and Amazon, and free e-books, make the headlines but, despite the evident successes of the last decade, e-books continue to excite little comment in professional journals and have attracted relatively little research funding.
And yet, e-books have the potential to change forever the ways in which teachers teach and students study. The success of desk-bound e-books can only be increased by new developments such as the new e-paper e-book readers from iRex and Sony, which move the market directly to users, and which will speed up the progress of e-book assimilation.
With e-books available directly from anywhere on or off campus, and portable readers capable of holding more than 100 books, the traditional academic library will need to examine the way it manages and delivers book collections. It is the users who will drive the e-book story forward; and, unlike earlier formats, no one is watching the users of this new breed of ‘super books’.
For example, between 1999 and 2004, the Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc) funded a major study of the provision and use of electronic resources in higher and further education in the UK – the Justeis project. It found that many of the sophisticated e-resources being made available were little or never used, particularly by undergraduate and postgraduate students.2
The main reasons were the lack of promotion and the lack of information skills training. A point possibly not made as forcibly in successive years as in the first was that many resources (e.g. gateways, portals, subject collections, aggregations of resources) were put in place with little or no user evaluation – it was simply assumed that if a demonstrably invaluable resource was made available, it would be used.
E-journals popular
The exception to this generalisation was e-journals, which were found to be used more than other such resources. The Jisc eLib SuperJournal Project (1996-98) evaluated user requirements thoroughly, and consequently directed the way in which e-journals were made available to further and higher education and promoted to the user communities.
As computer power and storage have increased, in some ways the logical extension of e-journals – e-books – came into being with no such market research. E-text archives (Gutenberg, Virginia, Oxford, etc) began as repositories of out-of-copyright texts, with little attempt at a book metaphor in the delivery, while, at the same time, many databases being made available (e.g. OED on CD-Rom, available from 1993) did not market the product as a surrogate book. In the 90s, several companies followed the e-journal model to become aggregators of growing collections of e-books, and the e-book had arrived on the scene.
In retrospect, it seems to have been the product of the availability of adequate hardware and software, and texts – little thought had been given to the user needs for, or user reactions to, the e-book. It was made available because it could be made available. Around 1999, following consolidation of e-book publishing in North America and Jisc’s increasing recognition of the format, UK academic libraries began to recognise the value of establishing e-book collections, although most institutions seem to have acquired collections without the benefit of user studies.
Earlier e-book user studies
A major catalyst to publishing and collecting e-books was the establishment by Jisc of the national e-Books Working Group, which advises publishers and academic librarians on the format, and facilitates both acquisition and research. A small corpus of research has developed in the UK, and projects have been undertaken into collection needs, availability of free e-books, metadata, promotion of e-books, and the publishing of electronic textbooks.3
These projects, as well as other UK research, have shown the potential of e-books across a range of disciplines in both FE and HE, have offered insights into the views of library and information services staff on the collection management of e-books, and have increased understanding of publishing trends and business models. In particular, the issues associated with bibliographic control of e-books and of licensing, archiving and facilitating access, as well as the networking and technological demands and promotional strategies, have been investigated.4, 5
Some user studies have been undertaken in the US, all limited to a single institution. Some tested the use of added-value features and user satisfaction with e-books created for the project over one semester, and learning from and usability of e-books by students. But only one, at Columbia University, was an extended or in-depth analysis.
This explored the use of online books; users’ reactions to the various formats; costs of publishing and maintaining print and online books in a library; scholarly communication issues; and college and university librarians’ reactions to the concept of online books.
It concluded that, for e-books to be a success, it is necessary to ‘provide books that will have the greatest utility in the online format to selected user groups with interfaces and functionalities that are both easy to use and valuable to the scholar’.6
The only UK study to date which approaches a user study7 measured the improvement in usability of a textbook published on the web over an electronic ‘unformatted’ version with respect to visual rhetoric, and determined the extent to which presentation and overall appearance contributed to comprehension.
The case for UK empirical research
The need for a major user study of e-books has been articulated strongly and recommended in a number of the Jisc-funded research reports.8
Furthermore, publishers have repeatedly acknowledged the need for data which will influence choice of titles, authorship and the design of new generations of e-books.
Since 1998 when the first major national study of e-books was conducted by Chris Armstrong of Information Automation Ltd (IAL) and Ray Lonsdale of the Department of Information Studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (UWA), both organisations have continued to undertake substantive research in the field. They have found no clear understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of e-books, as well as a poor grasp of the collection management issues.
Little thought has been given to the effect on e-learning of the provision of available e-book titles as opposed to specific titles required by the curriculum – the collection thus beginning to drive the pedagogy. No user evaluation has been undertaken to determine user needs (or use of existing facilities), library requirements, or publisher intentions. Development and provision have been uneven, and almost entirely dependent on e-book availability from publishers and aggregators. There is no consensus on functionality or software capability, and no clear understanding of how e-books or e-book collections may be (or are) used.
The SuperBook Project
Since 2000 Professor Dave Nicholas and colleagues at the School of Library, Archive and Information Studies (Slais) at University College London (UCL) have been applying new methodologies to user studies in the field of electronic journals, leading to better understanding of journal user behaviour and the actions of the virtual scholar.
The evaluations have been based on deep-log analysis of the digital ‘fingerprints’ left by the users of e-journals. In late 2005 discussions took place between Professors Dave Nicholas and Anthony Watkinson (Slais), Chris Armstrong (IAL), Ray Lonsdale (UWA) and Professor Barrie Gunter from the University of Leicester to explore the feasibility of combining research methodologies in a study of e-book usage, the SuperBook Project. This is the first time that this confluence of methodologies has been applied to the field of e-books.
The SuperBook Project would be the first large-scale national user study of e-book use by academic staff and students in HE/FE institutions in the UK.
It would:
- provide ILS and academic staff with information on student take-up and use of e-books, enabling them to devise appropriate selection and acquisition policies, and to develop pertinent collections. ILS staff also need help in establishing effective promotional activities to exploit their e-book collections
- help the ILS profession re-evaluate existing information literacy programmes with a view to improving the skills base of students
- illuminate the issues surrounding the integration of e-books within e-learning. Already, some institutions are beginning to integrate e-books within virtual learning environments, and how this can be achieved, as well as the efficacy of the result, is of concern to both academic and ILS staff
- inform academic staff in their choices about scholarly publishing, and in the selection of e-books for use by students
- inform the publishing industry of the attitudes towards e-books and offer insights into their authorship and design.
A central hypothesis of the study is that a huge shift in user behaviour may be about to occur as a result of the mass availability of e-books. SuperBook will be a major funded project and, consequently, it was felt that a preliminary study should be undertaken to offer data for a substantive proposal.
The preliminary study will be a case study of usage in the UCL library. The primary aim is to create a live research laboratory at UCL which puts e-books through their paces. From this laboratory, academics, publishers, users and librarians can learn and exchange information, while contributing ideas to be tested.
The survey population will comprise UCL students, researchers and academic staff from certain subject groups, who will be exposed to a significant and relevant collection of more than 3,000 e-books contributed by three publishers – Oxford Scholarship Online, Wiley Interscience, and Taylor & Francis. The study will evaluate awareness of, and attitudes towards, e-books, the impact of e-book intervention on learning, book usage, satisfaction with e-book content, and whether, as a result of these interventions, users demonstrate different patterns of study from the non-users. Possible interventions will include: cataloguing of e-books, making e-book recommendations to staff by librarians and to students by course leaders; subject librarians acting as advocates; links added to online reading lists, and links from the online resources area of the library’s website.
Essentially, the study will test whether or how scholars take to the e-books offered to them, in what ways, and with what impacts (i.e. impact on their usage of other information resources).
A secondary aim is to investigate the management of e-book collections. The study will explore issues such as bibliographic control, selection and acquisition, licensing, modes of access, and promotion.
Methodology
The preliminary study will combine quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Deep-log analysis (an analysis of the raw logs) of user transactions can offer insights into resource use, and a rich picture of usage trends and user needs can be obtained when it is used in conjunction with qualitative research. It has been used successfully in e-journal studies conducted as part of Ciber’s Virtual Scholar Research Programme and is currently being used in a US government-funded research project, MaxData, investigating the use of digital journals available on OhioLINK.9, 10
The California State University’s e-book project 11 used simple log analysis (e.g. activity-by-title and popular e-books reports) and a user satisfaction survey for a single e-book supplier. For the purposes of this study, we think it would be more appropriate to use an approach refined from the log analysis of the SuperJournal project.12
A steering group has been established comprising representatives from the publishers, UCL Library, the newly-formed Centre for Publishing at UCL, UWA, IAL and Leicester University, and it is envisaged that the project will begin in September 2006 and run for one year. Funding comes from publishers Emerald and Wiley, and other organisations are expected to come on board in the next six months. Additional funding is also anticipated from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
An e-book equivalent of the SuperJournal project is long overdue. Justeis demonstrated that ad hoc provision of resources is ill-conceived and pointless; if limited library resources are to be spent on appropriate and usable (thus ‘used’) e-books over the next few years, the need for a SuperBook project is inescapable. Equally, it is important to understand that significant take-up of e-books within HE communities could lead to a paradigm shift influencing e-learning, research and the nature of academic publishing.
References
1 Industry eBook Sales Statistics 2005. International Digital Publishing Forum, 2006 (www.idpf.org/doc_library/statistics/2005.htm).
2 Christine Urquhart et al . ‘Uptake and use of electronic information services: trends in UK higher education from the Justeis project.’ Program 37 (3), 2003, pp. 168-180.
3 Jisc e-Books Working Group: research commissioned by the e-Books Working Group (www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=coll_wg_ebooks_research).
4 Chris Armstrong and Ray Lonsdale. ‘Challenges in managing e-books collections in UK academic libraries.’ Library Cataloguing, Acquisitions, and Technical Services, 29 (1), 2005, pp. 33-50.
5 Goldleaf. Promoting the Uptake of E-Books in Higher and Further Education. Jisc E-Books Working Group, 2003 (www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=coll_ebookstudy2_hefe).
6 Mary Summerfield. Online Books: what roles will they fill for users of the academic library? Columbia University Libraries, July/August 2001.
7 M. Landoni, R. Wilson and F. Gibb. ‘Looking for guidelines for the production of electronic textbooks.’ Online Information Review 25 (3), 2001, pp. 181-195.
8 Chris Armstrong and Ray Lonsdale. The e-Book Mapping Exercise. Jisc e-Books Working Group, 2003 (www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=coll_ebookstudy1_emapping).
9 D. Nicholas et al. ‘The big deal: ten years on.’ Learned Information 18(4) October 2005, pp. 251-257.
10 D. Nicholas, P. Huntington and A. Watkinson. ‘Scholarly journal usage: the results of deep log analysis.’ Journal of Documentation 61(2), 2005, pp. 248-280.
11 CSU e-Book Pilot Project Final Report. The California State University, 2002 (http://seir.calstate.edu/ebook/index.shtml).
12 Ken Eason, Sue Richardson and Liangzhi Yu. ‘Patterns of use of electronic journals.’ Journal of Documentation 56 (5), 2000, pp. 477-504.
Chris Armstrong is Managing Director of Information Automation Ltd, a consultancy, research and training company in library and information management.
Ray Lonsdale is a Reader in Information Studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and a member of the Jisc e-Books Working Group.
Professor David Nicholas is Professor of Library and Information Studies and Director of the School of Library, Archive and Information Studies at University College London, as well as Director of UCL’s Centre for Publishing.
Updated: 16 October 2006