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Public library users response to e-books and e-audio Dr Bob Pymm School of Information Studies
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E-books In 2000, predicted US market would be $22 bn by 2005. Actually was $179 million. Less than 1% of books sold Attractive to publishers – very cheap to produce; no warehouses; no remainders Can have very large catalogues available A global market place – no problems re postage, delivery
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Read what you want, when you want Slogan from Amazon’s Kindle - $399 Weighs less than a paperback; long life battery High quality – print-like screen Wireless connectivity to access database, download etc Over 80,000 book titles, including new releases Can program to download daily newspapers so there in the morning
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Early e-book activities Project Gutenberg started 1971 – students keying in texts By 1997 – 1,000 books online Arrival of pocket readers late 90s Explosion with coming of the Internet Google – 2004 – deals with major libraries to digitise vast numbers 10m titles – public domain for full text; in copyright – summaries only
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But…. How do people react to e-books, especially for recreational reading?
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ACT Public Library Service Delivery via Web – simple and convenient – to your home PC (Web 2.0) or through.. Portable devices seen as posing lots of difficulties – cost, loans policy, uploading content, battery life etc. Decision to go with downloading to home PC only Choice of Overdrive – link with SirsiDynix a significant factor
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Selection Staff selected 1,000 fiction titles, 750 non-fiction. About half were audio books (e-audio) Concerns over lack of Australian titles (mainly US) Competitively priced – US$12 for e-books, US$45 for e-audio Question of formats – PDFs and Mobipocket acquired – pay for both. E-audio, not available for ipods
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Usage Based on a four month period earlier in the year: –E-audio averaged 350 borrowings/month (compared to traditional audio – 8,500/month) –E-books (PDF) averaged 200 borrowings/month –E-books (Mobipocket) averaged 45 borrowings/month
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Survey A questionnaire linked from ACT e-library web page active for one month 79 surveys completed 80% users between 25 and 55
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E-books 27% had borrowed more than six titles since the service had commenced 45% one time only borrowers Small number positive comments – “I can take multiple books with me anywhere” More negative ones – “I do not find reading from the screen as comfortable as reading a book”
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E-books (cont.) 50% read entire book on screen 25% started and gave up 11% printed some or all of the text 29% used special features such as increasing font size and in-text searching For those borrowing more than one title, fiction the most likely genre 39% against any more purchases; 33% not sure
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E-audio 33% borrowed more than six titles 31% borrowed only one More positive comments – though common to any form of audio book Negative comments – mainly re inability to download to ipods
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E-audio (cont.) 43% downloaded some or all to an MP3 player 30% downloaded to CD Fiction most popular 23% against further purchases, 31% not sure
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Concerns Range of titles, especially Australian content Lack of compatibility with Apple products Borrowing limits and not being able to ‘return’ titles early Individual technical issues Reading from screen
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Conclusions Focus on e-audio Promote e-audio service Revisit statistics following promotional campaign Research e-book market further – are there potential niches to be exploited? Standardise e-book format on PDF only Consider cost/benefits after 12 months
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Try them!!
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