"Criteria for Selecting Electronic Books in an Academic Library: Will we ever need to buy paper again?"

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Campbell, Sandy

• Based on the assumption that all books will soon be available in both electronic and paper formats, selections librarians will soon be faced with a format decision for each title they purchase. The work of Summerfield, Mandel and Kantor at Columbia University has given us some early information about the ways in which academics use electronic materials. They identified length of use (\"read little\" vs \"read much\") as being a defining factor in a scholar's preference for electronic or paper format1. With this factor in mind, qualitative research was undertaken at the University of Alberta to determine whether or not there are general or specific criteria which would help selectors determine which books would be \"read little\" or \"read much\" by faculty. Faculty members in a variety of subject areas were introduced to netLibrary or ENGnetBASE publications. They were then asked a series of questions about their potential use of the materials. The explanations for their choices were noted and revealed patterns of factors affecting their choices. These patterns form some preliminary criteria for selectors who need to choose between e-books and paper books.

• Date created

  2000-11-02

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Academic library collections
  • Articles
  • Digital vs print library collections
  • Electronic books - selection criteria
  • 2000
  • Canada, Alberta, Edmonton, University of Alberta

• Type of Item

  Conference/Workshop Presentation

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R38X92

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 International