E-Books Revisited: Surveying Student E-Book Usage in a Distributed Learning Academic Library 6 Years Later

This article is the result of a 2009 survey of student usage of e-books at Royal Roads University (RRU) Library. The authors found that the proportion of students using RRU Library e-books has gone up since a similar 2003 survey, although only just above half of students are using RRU Library e-books. An almost identical number of student respondents (approximately 54%) said “no” to preferring a print version of the book over the e-book version of the book in both the 2003 and 2009 surveys. The majority of students rated the ability to download an e-book to a hand-held device as not important. There has been a notable increase in the use of e-books for course readings from 2003 to 2009. A lack of awareness of RRU Library e-books remains the top reason cited by students for not using them.