Library Facilitation of eTextbooks in Engineering Classes: Student Adoption and Perception

As a means of aiding students who struggle with the high cost of textbooks, some libraries now leverage their ebook subscription packages to provide eTextbooks for courses. At the University of Michigan, the engineering librarians routinely offer ebook versions of engineering textbooks whenever possible. Although this institution has been following this principle for the past ten years, it has done so with little direct knowledge of students’ preferences regarding their options for print versus ebook format for their textbooks. Some studies have shown that students expressed a preference for using their textbooks in print format. To assess the usefulness of the service of providing eTextbooks, in the Fall 2019 semester the engineering librarians at the University of Michigan developed and sent a survey to engineering graduate and undergraduate students whose textbooks were available as eTextbooks. The survey sought to learn about students’ use of the ebooks and their opinions about eTextbooks. As a follow up to the survey, the librarians met with two focus groups who provided more qualitative information on student use of eTextbooks. Survey and focus group results may inform not only changes to the service of providing eTextbooks, but also can be shared with publishers to potentially inform improvements to ebook platforms. This paper reports on the results of the survey and focus group and implications for the future.