Confessions of a Late Bloomer: Use and Acceptance of an E-books Program in an Undergraduate Library

Abstract

Although e-books date back to the 1970s, the peak of academic adoption was in the early to mid 2000s. At the beginning of the 2012/2013 academic year, the Franklin & Marshall (F&M) College Library had roughly 500,000 print volumes cataloged and only 12 e-books. By the end of that year, the catalog contained approximately 120,000 e-books. In February 2014, the F&M College Library conducted a campus-wide survey about e-books. By comparing these results with F&M’s usage statistics, the Library found practical suggestions on how to improve current acceptance and usage of e-books.