2014 Charleston Library Conference

As libraries’ e-books collections reach critical mass, there is a growing need to assess their value, not only with respect to cost, but also in comparison with the print book collections. Do library users tend to prefer print or e-books? What factors influence those choices? To answer these questions and to help focus our collection development strategies, Claremont Colleges Library conducted a comparative usage study in three stages - across three semesters, focusing on a sample of Course Adopted Books containing the same titles, available in both print and electronic format. These samples represent a unique research opportunity to examine and contrast the usage statistics for each of the two formats, while reducing the variations in preference due to factors like desirability and relevancy of the content, or nature and urgency of the information need. This presentation will reveal some of the most interesting and unexpected results that emerged from the third stage of the study and compare them with the data from the first two stages. It will also examine the methodology used to compare usage of print to electronic books, and the presenter hopes to provoke a discussion regarding her approach, given the challenges of working with data of different nature. In closing, the presentation will touch on some of the ways Claremont Colleges Library correlates the results of the study with qualitative survey data collected during the same period of time, in order to better understand the factors that influence user preferences and behaviour with respect to format choices.