Academic Historians in Canada Report Both Positive and Negative Attitudes Towards E-books for Teaching and Research

Evidence summary; Article reviewObjective – To understand academic historians’ attitudes towards, and perceptions of, e-books for use in teaching and research. Design – Qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews using a grounded theory approach. Subjects – Ten faculty members in departments of history at academic institutions in Southwestern Ontario participated. Methods – Participants were recruited using flyers and email distribution lists. The authors conducted semi-structured interviews lasting 30-60 minutes, between October 2010 and December 2011. After 10 interviews, the authors determined saturation had been reached and ceased recruitment. Interviews were recorded and transcribed for coding. Analysis was conducted using grounded theory procedures incorporating Roger’s Innovation decision model. Main Results – The authors elicited participants' perceptions of e-books without providing a common definition for the concept. Consistent with previous studies, participants were confused about what constituted an e-book, particularly the distinction between e-books and electronic journals and databases. Several comments included illustrate this confusion, indicating the responses collected may represent perceptions of e-resources more generally, rather than e-books in particular. The authors mention that at least one participant who initially responded that they had not used e-books later changed their response as the interview progressed. Unfortunately, the exact number of participants who did so is not reported. Participants reported both negative and positive attitudes towards e-books. Attitudes varied depending on the characteristic discussed. The characteristics identified focused primarily on the delivery mechanism, rather than the content, of e-books. The authors identified four factors each as contributing to positive and negative attitudes. Factors associated with a negative attitude included availability, serendipity, cost, and tradition. These factors stemmed from concerns about changing student research behaviours resulting from the differences between e-books and print books. Factors associated with a positive attitude included convenience, teaching innovations, research practices, and cost benefits. These factors largely reflected benefits to students, such as the ability to access e-books easily (convenience), increased access in general, and the perceived relatively low cost of student e-books. The factor directly benefitting respondents was improved speed and accuracy in their work, enabled by particular technological features. While participants were eager to use e-books in the classroom, there were concerns about implications for research practices. Participants worried that the benefits of browsing and serendipitous discovery would be lost as students chose materials based on convenience rather than other factors, such as quality. Finally, the perceived lack of digitized historical documents available for use as primary sources was also of concern. Conclusions – The authors state that confusion regarding the nature of e-books slows adoption. While participants were exploring ways to incorporate e-books into their norms, values, and research practices, they are unlikely to rely solely on e-books as primary sources. This stems from two perceptions. First, current e-book formats and platforms do not authentically represent all the characteristics of print books. Second, there are insufficient primary sources available as e-books. The validity of these perceptions is not addressed in this article

What’s the use?: analysing student citations to provide new insights into e-book usage

This article reports on a small-scale user-focused piece of research carried out at the University of Sussex. In an attempt to better understand the impact of e-books on student outputs, citation analysis was performed on coursework to identify the e-books that had been used. Of the students surveyed, 11.6% cited an e-book in their work and, for this particular group, EBL was found to be the most popular collection. However, cross reference with the Library discovery tool and Google revealed that e-books available from the web were cited more than those from library collections. Interviews uncovered a spectrum of usage, leading to the conclusion that a comprehensive e-book strategy is required that makes students aware of their benefits, equips them with the skills needed for effective use and increases the number of e-books available

Are book publications disappearing from scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities?

© 2018, Tim C.E. Engels, Andreja Istenič Starčič, Emanuel Kulczycki, Janne Pölönen and Gunnar Sivertsen. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the evolution in terms of shares of scholarly book publications in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in five European countries, i.e. Flanders (Belgium), Finland, Norway, Poland and Slovenia. In addition to aggregate results for the whole of the social sciences and the humanities, the authors focus on two well-established fields, namely, economics & business and history. Design/methodology/approach: Comprehensive coverage databases of SSH scholarly output have been set up in Flanders (VABB-SHW), Finland (VIRTA), Norway (NSI), Poland (PBN) and Slovenia (COBISS). These systems allow to trace the shares of monographs and book chapters among the total volume of scholarly publications in each of these countries. Findings: As expected, the shares of scholarly monographs and book chapters in the humanities and in the social sciences differ considerably between fields of science and between the five countries studied. In economics & business and in history, the results show similar field-based variations as well as country variations. Most year-to-year and overall variation is rather limited. The data presented illustrate that book publishing is not disappearing from an SSH. Research limitations/implications: The results presented in this paper illustrate that the polish scholarly evaluation system has influenced scholarly publication patterns considerably, while in the other countries the variations are manifested only slightly. The authors conclude that generalizations like “performance-based research funding systems (PRFS) are bad for book publishing” are flawed. Research evaluation systems need to take book publishing fully into account because of the crucial epistemic and social roles it serves in an SSH. Originality/value: The authors present data on monographs and book chapters from five comprehensive coverage databases in Europe and analyze the data in view of the debates regarding the perceived detrimental effects of research evaluation systems on scholarly book publishing. The authors show that there is little reason to suspect a dramatic decline of scholarly book publishing in an SSH

Browsing the Intangible: Does Visibility Lead to Increased Use?

Library collections have become fractured as increased acquisition of ebooks has created hybrid print and digital collections. These developments have implications for user awareness of the most current items in the collection and their ability to understand their relationship to print collections, due to ebooks&rsquo; absence in the physical library space. At the William M. White Business Library at the University of Colorado, Boulder, collocated displays are deployed in the print stacks to promote awareness of ebook collections and enable browsing and serendipitous discovery. This project revealed the difficulty of assessing ebook collections and their promotion when many platforms are involved.</p

STAK – Serendipitous tool for augmenting knowledge: A conceptual tool for bridging digital and physical resources

Humanities scholars have long claimed the importance of browsing in the library stacks as part of their research process. The digitization practices of libraries and archives, while meant to assist with preservation and access, make the physical browsing experience impossible. While there have been various attempts to recreate this experience online, none as yet has created a digital tool which users can interact with as they move through the physical material in the library. This paper aims to introduce the concept of the Serendipitous Tool for Augmenting Knowledge (STAK), a geolocative app that allows users to access material complementary to what they are looking at on library shelves. The authors outline the research behind STAK, the potential for locative media and augmented reality in libraries, and the design requirements for STAK. Finally, they outline two elements of serendipity that they hope to emulate in STAK: Noticing, and Capture and Recall. By enhancing the physical collection with digital information, STAK aims to bring scholars the best of both worlds, and to encourage them to return to the physical library to explore, learn, and browse. Depuis longtemps, les chercheurs des sciences humaines soulignent l’importance dans leur processus de recherche de parcourir des ouvrages dans les rayons des bibliothèques. Bien que les pratiques de numérisation des bibliothèques et des archives aient pour objet d’aider la préservation et l’accès, elles rendent aussi impossible l’expérience de la consultation physique sur place. Il y a bien eu diverses tentatives pour recréer cette expérience en ligne, mais aucune n’a jusqu’à présent créé un outil numérique avec lequel les usagers peuvent interagir alors qu’ils consultent physiquement la documentation dans la bibliothèque. Cet article vise à introduire le concept de Serendipitous Tool for Augmenting Knowledge (STAK) (Outil fortuit pour l’enrichissement de la connaissance), une application géo-locative qui permet aux usagers d’avoir accès à une documentation complémentaire à celle qu’ils recherchent dans les rayons de la bibliothèque. Les auteurs présentent la recherche motivant STAK, le potentiel des médias locatifs et de la réalité enrichie dans les bibliothèques, et les exigences de la conception de STAK. Enfin, ils soulignent deux éléments d’heureux hasard qu’ils espèrent imiter dans STAK: Constater, et Saisir et Rappeler. En optimisant la collection physique au moyen de l’information numérique, STAK vise à apporter aux chercheurs le meilleur des deux mondes, et à les encourager à retourner dans la bibliothèque physique pour explorer, apprendre et parcourir les ouvrages

Teorijski pristupi istraživanju e-knjige

The adoption and continued use of innovations by societies, organisations and individuals has been a subject of research since before the 1930s. A variety of different theories have been developed to account for the different speeds at which innovations are adopted and the factors that affect the adoption process. This paper reviews theories of the adoption of innovations with particular reference to the recent phenomenon of the e-book as a cultural innovation that is having an impact on individuals, organizations and national policy makers. The paper will suggest which theories are most appropriate for the different levels at which the innovation is employed.Usvajanje i kontinuirana upotreba inovacija od strane društva, organizacija i pojedinaca predmetom je istraživanja još od 1930-ih. Niz različitih teorija oblikovano je kako bi odgovorilo na različitu brzinu kojom se inovacije usvajaju i čimbenike koji utječu na taj proces. Ovaj rad razmatra teorije usvajanja inovacija s posebnim osvrtom na fenomen e-knjige kao kulturalnu inovaciju koja utječe na pojedince, organizacije te one koji stvaraju nacionalne politike. U radu će se predložiti teorije koje su najprikladnije za različite razine usvajanja inovacije

On Birthing Dancing Stars: The Need for Bounded Chaos in Information Interaction

While computers causing chaos is acommon social trope, nearly the entirety of the history of computing is dedicated to generating order. Typical interactive information retrieval tasks ask computers to support the traversal and exploration of large, complex information spaces. The implicit assumption is that they are to support users in simplifying the complexity (i.e. in creating order from chaos). But for some types of task, particularly those that involve the creative application or synthesis of knowledge or the creation of new knowledge, this assumption may be incorrect. It is increasingly evident that perfect order—and the systems we create with it—support highly-structured information tasks well, but provide poor support for less-structured tasks.We need digital information environments that help create a little more chaos from order to spark creative thinking and knowledge creation. This paper argues for the need for information systems that offerwhat we term ‘bounded chaos’, and offers research directions that may support the creation of such interface

Weeding With Wisdom: Tuning Deselection Of Print Monographs In Book-Reliant Disciplines

As university libraries transition to digital collections and new services, their book deselection projects often lead to the adoption of cross-discipline quantitative weeding criteria (such as age and low circulation) in the interest of speed and presumed fairness. Cross-discipline quantitative rubrics, however, can have unintended negative consequences when applied to disciplines such as history and literature that rely on older books with low circulation statistics. The authors argue for a discipline-differentiated approach to weeding academic library collections that can employ quantitative criteria for disciplines, such as in the sciences, that are more reliant on current materials and qualitative criteria for disciplines, such as in the humanities, whose scholars benefit from ready access to older and low-use books

Le manuel numérique en contexte post-secondaire : stratégies pédagogiques, nouvelles méthodes d’apprentissage, potentiel et limites

Comprend des références bibliographiquesCette recherche a été financée par le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada (CRSH). La présente synthèse de connaissances a été présentée dans le cadre du concours 2015