To celebrate its first five years in ebook production, Springer has consulted with a number of stakeholders to produce the report STM eBooks: Librarian Perspectives on the First 5 years. The report outlines the challenges and opportunities that ebooks present to key stakeholders.
Key findings – end users
- Technology innovations including interactive video and the ability to make notes are highly valued by users
- Lack of standardisation across platforms confuses users
- Complex sign-on processes are a barrier to use
- Some technical books are difficult to read on certain devices
Key findings – librarians
- Concern about long term availability of ebooks
- Need to develop ROI measures for ebooks
- New roles may develop for librarians – as information literacy experts or as one participant outlined ‘as the interface between patron and the publisher’
- Improved metadata from publishers will help improve discoverability
Conclusions
- Ebooks will continue to develop more elements that the print work cannot feature, including supplementary materials and interactive content
- Increased emphasis on usage statistics to help manage collections and anticipate user needs
- Development of more flexible access and pricing models
- Standardisation of metadata
- Mobile devices will continue to inform the way ebooks are developed
- Demands of users who will expect easy 24-hour access to high quality content will shape developments
The report is free to download from the Springer website.
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