Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, vol. 5, no. 1 (2010)

Electronic Book Usage Patterns as Observed at an
Academic Library: Searches and Viewings


Alain Lamothe
Electronic Resources Librarian
J.N. Desmarais Library
Laurentian University

Keywords

ebooks, electronic books, usage statistics, searches, viewings, reference,
monograph

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a quantitative study exploring the online usage
of the electronic book collection at the J.N. Desmarais Library at Laurentian
University, Canada. In 2009, e-book usage statistics were evaluated to provide a
better understanding of how the e-book collection has been utilized. Both current
electronic book usage data and data from previous years are reported in order to
present and understand general patterns in how the electronic book collection is,
and has been utilized. The number of e-books, the number of viewings and the
number of searches were examined. The size of the collection grew from a single
book in 2002 to more than 60,000 in 2008. The pattern of purchase varied from
that of bulk purchasing of large e-book collections, to selective purchasing
between 2005 and 2007, and then back to bulk purchasing in 2008. Both
viewings and searches have increased from year to year at a greater pace than
the size of the e-book collection. The number of searches also appeared to
provide a viable means of measuring the use of an e-book collection rather than
relying entirely on viewings or downloads. Ratios were calculated to compare
viewings and searches to the size of the collection. The highest viewings per e-
book and searches per e-book ratios were observed in those years when
purchasing was done more selectively. It is also clear that the electronic
reference collection has seen far greater use than the electronic monographs.
Furthermore, usage of electronic monographs appeared to be directly
proportional to the size of the collection.

Introduction

This paper presents the results of a quantitative study exploring online usage of
the electronic book collection at the J.N. Desmarais Library at Laurentian
University. It is the first such study to be undertaken at Laurentian University.
Both current electronic book usage data and data from previous years are
reported in order to present and understand general patterns in how the

Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, vol. 5, no. 1 (2010)

2

electronic book collection is, and has been utilized. The number of viewings and
the number of searches performed on publisher and aggregator websites are
explored. A comparison between electronic reference and monographic books is
also presented.

Laurentian University is a multi-campus university founded in 1960, with its main
campus located in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. It is considered by the Carnegie
classification of institution scale (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of
Teaching 2009) to be medium in size with a total full-time student population of
7,500 in 2008 and over 550 enrolled in various graduate programs. Also in 2008,
over 420 full-time faculty members taught and performed research. Programs
cover multiple fields in the sciences, social sciences and humanities with 94
undergraduate, 18 Master's and 6 doctoral degrees offered.

Between 2002 and 2008, the number of electronic books available to the
Laurentian University community jumped from 1 to over 60,000. Current
expenditures at the J.N. Desmarais Library for its electronic books amount to
$93,000 (CDN$) accounting for about 20% of the library's total book
expenditures. Additionally, electronic monographs currently represent 14% of all
monographic titles held by the library. This is similar to the 13% observed in
CARL libraries (Owen et al. 2008).

There has been confusion throughout the literature about the term itself, with e-
book or ebook, electronic book, electronic text, or even e-text being commonly
used (Dinkelman and Stacy-Bates 2007). The term "e-book" will be used in this
paper.

The fact that web-based e-books do not require the presence of a particular
viewing device but only a connection to the Internet and a web browser makes
this model extremely appealing (Bry and Krause 275-287; Dillon 113-124;
Tannery et al. 305-309). As pointed out by Anuradha and Usha (662-679), a
"web interface allows the user not only to read the text, but also opens up
possibilities of linking to other resources, cross-text searching, utilization of
dictionaries and so on." Furthermore, access to web-based content is neither
impeded nor restricted by any particular reading device (Connaway 340-349).
Both patrons and library personnel have repeatedly been frustrated by the
operation of available reading devices which typically require more training than
that needed for web-browsers (Dearnley, McKnight and Morris 175-182;
McKnight and Dearnley 235-242). One must also consider the extra cost of
purchasing necessary readers for the library community. For the reasons
mentioned above, the J.N. Desmarais Library has been exclusively purchasing
web-based e-books.

Creating a bibliographic record for each e-book in the library's collection has
been shown to significantly increase e-book use(Bailey 52-59; Dillon 113-124;
Gibbons 363-367; Langston 19-32; Levine-Clark 7-14) with some libraries