Library E-Book Survey

Primary Research Group has just published Library Use of E-books, 2008-09 Edition. The report is for purchase but a summary is available online.

It is based on a survey of 75 academic, public and special libraries in a number of countries.

Interesting facts:

• The vast majority of surveyed libraries listed their e-books in their online library catalog
• More than half of all patrons reported either extensive or significant use of e-reference books, and nearly a quarter of the college libraries in the sample reported that their patrons used e-books quite extensively
• Business books were among the most popular e-books. Non-U.S. libraries reported even heavier use than did U.S. libraries
• Librarians felt that their patrons were less skilled in using e-book collections than they were in using databases
• Use of e-books in the hard sciences was particularly high
• Libraries in the sample maintained a print version for a mean of 24% of the e-books in their e-book collections

The Supreme Court of Canada has some 1929 e-books provided through NetLibrary, a division of OCLC. MARC records for the e-books in our OPAC provide a direct link to each document.