UCL’s Super e-books study reveals potential at London Book Fair

Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons and Thomson took the lions share of visitors and space in the academic sector of this years London Book Fair, the Oxford University Press (OUP) tried to be conspicuous with its (not quite) 99 red balloons, whilst New Era publications (scientologist founder L. Ron Hubbard’s publishers sat on the fringes of the sector ominously busy with traffic. Fortunately IWR wasn’t there to deal with

Hollywood

cults, and more to see if the myth of a successful e-book business model might emerge.

In fact there were two prominent e-book centric seminars held on day one, indicating the amount of interest being generated at the moment in the business and academic publishing worlds. The first was held by Wiley entitled The e-book Challenge – Aligning Customers and Publishers, whilst the second hosted by the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) Publishers, and chaired by Elsevier’s Vice President Chris Gibson, saw a packed room wanting to learn more on the experiences of Building e-book Collections, especially from key speaker, David Nicholas, Director of the School of Library, Archive and Information Studies at University College London. Nicholas, who came to share his experiences of a recent UCL study; ‘Super book’ e-books in action, which monitored over 5 years the usage of digital content and thereafter e-book practices from the university’s so called virtual scholars.

First up though Elsevier’s Gibson hammered home that “corners have now been turned in the e-book market, after several false dawns” and Nicholas seemed to confirm this, citing that the study of thousands of the University’s virtual scholars who had taken part in the study showed the potential for a “tipping point in e-book usage” – going as far as to say “next year it will go massive”

The study saw support from both Wiley and Emerald who supplied the university with three thousand e-book and such was the high usage by the virtual students that according to Nicholas of the two thousand respondents, the main core of e-book users tended to be independents, rely on Google and publishers sites for their search and commented they had had a negative experience with the UCL library in the past.

Generational differences were also highlighted in the study, showing that undergraduates were more likely to read direct from the screen than lecturers who would print out material, perhaps showing more of an ease with pure online practices among the younger academics. ne interesting anecdote that Nicholas used to illustrate e-book potential was when one lecturer at UCL included an e-book in a recommended reading list, this then went on to account for 25% of all the course material usage by their students.

Similarly impressed Nicholas informed us that based on the study, JISC have taken up the results of the Super book survey and are planning to drop in e-books to every UK University.  But more than anything, he warned that more evidence based and desk research and planning were needed to truly see the potential of e-books and journals in academia. “The virtual scholar loves choice and an e-journal platform will have a younger audience, but it is going to be a more volatile and unpredictable model than we have seen traditionally”