Mission Possible: E-books and the Humanities

E-books have become popular in various scientific fields, but their value for the humanities has been less obvious. This is presented in the context of scholarly communications in the humanities and various trends affecting the nature of the research enterprise, such as faculty behaviour, generational change, digital scholarship, the shift from a text-based culture to a visual culture, publishing issues, and interdisciplinarity. Key library issues, such as budgeting, collection development, workflows, access, and promotion, are discussed. The usage of e-book collections in the humanities at the University of Ottawa is presented as a backdrop for the discussion.