News
College students still like print books, says study
Ebooks and e-readers are slow to catch on with college students, according to a recent study by OnCampus Research, a division of the National Association of College Stores (NACS) in the USA. ‘With all the attention given to ebooks and e-readers, particularly as to their use in higher education, we wanted to cut through all the speculation and put hard numbers to it,’ explained OnCampus research manager Elizabeth Riddle.
‘It seems that the death of the printed book, at least on campus, has been greatly exaggerated, and that dedicated e-readers have a way to go before they catch on with this demographic.’
The OnCampus Research Electronic Book and E-Reader Device survey, conducted in early October, found that only 13 per cent of college students had purchased an electronic book of any kind during the previous three months. Of
those, 56 per cent stated that the primary purpose of their ebook purchase was for required course materials for class. What’s more, students are reading ebooks on a computer rather than a dedicated e-reading device. In the survey, 92 per cent of students said that they do not own an e-reader. Instead, approximately 77 per cent of the students who said they recently purchased an ebook said that they used a laptop computer or Netbook to read it. Desktop computer was the second most popular choice (30 per cent), followed at 19 per cent by a smartphone, such as an iPhone, Blackberry, or Android. Another 19 per cent reported using an e-reader like a Kindle or Nook. A tablet computer, such as an iPad, was the least common reading device used by students, selected by only four per cent of respondents.
Norwegian digitisation hits 13 million
The National Archives of Norway has scanned around 13 million microfi lm images as part of a project to digitise a considerable part of its holdings and make all the information contained on microfi lm readily available to the public via the internet.
Three NextScan Eclipse 300 Rollfi lm production level scanners are being used to digitise microfi lm information stored in the archive, with one Kodak i1860 high-
volume scanner purchased to scan paper records. The equipment was supplied by local Kodak reseller, Kibi Norge AS.
In total, it is expected that around 15 million microfi lm images will be scanned as part of the project. A huge and varied range of records are expected to be made available online including probate and court records, parish church registers, which list births, baptisms, still births, death and burial records,
4 Research Information December 2010/January 2011
along with marriage registers, immigration and vaccination information. Svein Warberg, the National Archives of Norway’s digitisation projects advisor, explained, ‘We wanted to make the most popular records – the parish church registers – available online fi rst so researchers, genealogists and members of the public could access them for free. That’s where we started and the project has evolved from there.’
NEWS IN BRIEF
E-readers will fuel growth in global e-paper market The global market for e-paper will be $5.73 billion by 2015, according to analysts at MarketsandMarkets. It will grow at a rate of 25.3 per cent per year between 2010 and 2015, they add. The e-paper market is primarily driven by e-readers and other consumer electronic devices.
Springer to distribute Wageningen ebooks Springer will distribute ebooks on behalf of Wageningen Academic Publishers. The cooperation will begin with the copyright year 2011 and will include approximately 30 new titles annually.
The electronic versions of
the Wageningen Academic Publishers’ titles will continue to be branded as Wageningen Academic Publishers’ titles but will become part of the Springer eBook packages. Wageningen will still be responsible for programme planning and book development and will sell and distribute the print versions of the books.
BL and CRL team up to digitise theses The British Library and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) have made 400 doctoral theses focusing on the Middle East, Islamic studies and related subjects available online. The theses – which are said to represent a wealth of UK postgraduate research into politics, culture and society in the Islamic world – can now be downloaded for free by scholars worldwide via the British Library’s EThOS (Electronic Theses Online) service.
www.researchinformation.info
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