First thoughts on: Abdullah & Gibb, Students' attitudes towards e-books in a Scottish higher education institution: part 2

Library Review 57.9 (September 2008): p676-689. doi: 10.1108/00242530810911798 (University of Illinois Access)

Why should you read this: More in depth analysis of NetLibrary collections have been conducted, but there are some interesting similarities between e-book users and non-users reviewed. At least worth skimming.

At a glance [and my thoughts]:

An analysis of the use of two netLibrary e-book collections, and a survey 18 users of those collections (half e-book users, half non e-book users).

Interesting quote: "Despite their positive reaction and attitudes towards e-books, students commented that e-books needed to be promoted more strongly and that there were limitations with respect to use." P. 676

Interesting quote: "…the larger the number of e-titles in a subject collection then the larger the percentage of e-titles accessed." [A critical mass of electronic books is necessary in a patrons subject area before they begin to except, and heavily use, those e-collections?] p.679

Interesting quote: "it can be concluded that the largest subject holdings and the most accessed subject vary depending on the specialisms of the institutions, the number of titles subscribed to by the institutions' libraries, and the e-book promotion conducted by the institutions and their staff." p.682

Interesting quote: "respondents preferred to use a printed book (94 per cent) for 'extended reading'…. Respondents (67 per cent) preferred to use an e-book for both 'finding relevant content' and 'fact finding'." p.685

Interesting quote: "search tasks that involved simple and advanced searches were rated as 'easy' in general … The test… demonstrated no significant relationship in so far as users' experience of using or not using e-books before the survey did not influence their rating of the ease of use of the search and browse tasks." p.688

First thoughts on: Abdullah & Gibb, Students' attitudes towards e-books in a Scottish higher education institution: part 1

Library Review 57.8 (August 2008): p593-605. doi: 10.1108/00242530810899577 (University of Illinois Access)

Why should you read this: Well written- concise and informative. A must read for people interested in academic e-book use.

At a glance [and my thoughts]:

Analysis of a self selected survey of 1,372 students (from a target population of 13,568), 90%undergrad and 10% grad in responses, to ascertain student awareness of, level of use of, and methods of use of e-books; as well as the reason students choose to use (or not to use) e-books.

72 percent familiar with the term e-book, 60% had never used an e-book, 57% didn't know the library had e-books. [Issue of awareness possibly, but also possibly that people don't yet think of the e-book as the default go-to format when they need a book]

Most popular e-book format: computer based ebook (92%) [versus reading on a dedicated device like a Kindle]

Most common type of text read: textbook (42 %)

Most popular reading methods: on screen: 67%, printed out 25%

Most frequent reasons for e-book using: research for a project, essay, etc.\

Least frequent: leisure reading

Most common reason for using e-books: freely available (from the library), followed y "no equivalent print book available"

Reason for not using: top answers - unaware of them (34.4%) and prefer print (21.7). [However, this was followed by several other categories which I really think are subsets of "prefer print," bringing prefer print up to 51.7%, making it the most common reason for not using e-books… the e-book isn't yet enough like the printed book to attract many people yet?]

Interesting quote: "On the negative side, apart from the much repeated comment that reading on screen for extended periods was uncomfortable and hence printed books were preferred, students commented that e-book provision in their library was limited in terms of viewing times and print quotas…copy and print policies… should be reviewed… to promote more usage of e-books" pg 603

Trying something new…

Well, today is a research day, and I'm busy catching up on the backlog of e-books articles I've been meaning to get to for the last few months. I am a major note taker/annotator when reading; it helps me get my thoughts together better when I am prepping to write something. A huge amount of the meta-data I generate never actually gets put to any use. Starting today I'm going to post my notes/thoughts on what I'm reading, in the hopes that someone might find it useful.

Firefox 3.5 problems with openCMS

We’ve recently discovered a bug in openCMS specific to Firefox. This problem only effects Firefox (not internet explorer) and only version 3.5 and up.

The problematic behavior occurs when you try to browse directories in the CMS. Most of the time, the system just seems to hang, never updating your workspace directory view, making it difficult (and often impossible) to browse to the content you need to edit or create.

The changes to how Firefox 3.5 and above handles JavaScript may cause problems with other sites and web applications that rely heavily on JavaScript as well. We are currently working on patching openCMS so that it will work natively with Firefox 3.5+ . In the interim, there is a simple workaround that will allow you to configure Firefox 3.5+ so that it will execute JavaScript the same way that pre 3.5 versions did.

1. Open Firefox
2. Determine your Firefox version by selecting to Help > About Mozilla Firefox from the menu bar
3. If your version is 3.5 or greater, then you are affected, continue to step four. Otherwise, you have nothing to worry about
4. Type:
   about:config
   into the Firefox address bar and hit enter
5. Click the “I’ll be careful I promise” button
6. In the Filter box type:
   jit
7. In the results list, right click on "javascript.options.jit.content" and select Toggle. This should set the value for this entry to false (you can also just double click the entry javascript.options.jit.content to toggle this value between true and false)

That’s it, you’re done. This change does not require you to restart your machine or browser.

Back from ACRL 2009

Last week I was at the ACRL 2009 conference. I tried my best to juggle attending events and monitoring my emails but, as always seems to happen, the requests for assistance have built up a bit. I'm working through my emails now, so if you're waiting on some assistance, it'll be heading your way soon!

Where did the flipping pages graphic go?

During the last library gateway redesign, a flipping page graphic was added to the gateway, and subsequently to the headers of all html content managed through the CMS. As part of the University’s latest effort to unify the branding of the University of Illinois, we’ve removed the flipping page graphic, as it violates university guidelines related to the use of logos (see: Illinois Identity Standards- The Illinois Brand)

New CMS Managed Employee Bios

This Thursday, November 5th we’ll be updating the employee directory (http://www.library.uiuc.edu/people/) to link to the new CMS managed employee bios. We’ll also be updating the web site so any links to the old employee bio pages will get redirected to the new employee directory.

If you provided us with an employee bio last year to be used in the CMS, you can look at your new bio now by going to:

http://www.library.uiuc.edu/people/bios/YourNetID

for example, http://www.library.uiuc.edu/people/bios/lnwiley/

Even if you didn’t send us a bio before, you can now create and edit your own employee bio through the CMS! In order use the CMS, you must have attended a CMS training session. Our next open CMS training sessions are being held on November 12 and November 25, 9:30am-noon (more information on CMS Training Sessions). Please contact Camilla Fulton (cfulton2@illinois.edu) or Robert Slater (rslater@illinois.edu) if you plan on attending. Registration is not required, and drop-ins are always welcomed (but letting us know you plan on attending helps us make sure we have enough hand-outs prepared).

Instructions on how to create and edit your employee bio pages can be found in the help section of the CMS (upper right hand corner, the "? Help" button) under "All Training Materials", "OpenCMS 203… Making and editing Employee Bio pages").

If you create a new employee bio, please let us know so we can add a link to it from the employee directory. All you need to do is contact Camilla Fulton (cfulton2@illinois.edu) or Robert Slater (rslater@illinois.edu) and let us know you’re bio is ready to be linked from the employee directory.