Students, Vendor Platforms, and E-textbooks: Using E-books as E-textbooks

Abstract

Considering the cost of textbooks, our library has been working to make copies of textbooks available for all engineering courses. We purchase electronic copies of textbooks when they are available for institutional access. In fall of 2011 we provided 41 e-textbooks for 36 courses, or approximately 8% of all engineering courses. In fall of 2012, we are providing 73 e-textbooks for 62 courses, or approximately 15% of all engineering courses. We provide access to books on various platforms including MyiLibrary, ebrary, EBL, Knovel, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, Wiley, and Safari.

To learn about students’ experiences in using the e-textbooks, in fall 2011 we sent a survey to 2014 students in 35 classes. We received 299 usable responses for a 15% response rate. Findings from the survey guided changes to some of our procedures for providing and announcing e-textbooks in 2012. We distributed a second survey in fall 2012 to 2033 students in 42 classes. We received 449 usable responses for a 22% response rate.

Our survey asked students to rate usability in regard to ease of use, ease of access, reading, printing, sharing, taking notes, searching, and others, and asked them to rate overall satisfaction.

In these works, we focus on student responses to the usability questions and student responses to open questions. We also present data for individual e-book vendors in an attempt to draw some comparisons in usability between the different vendors.