User
friendliness and breadth of selection mean everything when it comes to library
e-books, according to the results of the Massachusetts eBook Project Survey.
The project
included a pilot program to test three e-book platforms (Baker & Taylor’s
Axis 360, BiblioLabs’ Biblioboard, and ProQuest’s EBL) with 49 libraries (28
public, 10 academic, eight school, and three special libraries) from November
2013 through summer 2014. At the crux of the pilot is the assertion that
libraries want to lend more digital books and library patrons are interested in
borrowing more e-books.
Surveys of
participating librarians and patrons indicate that may be easier said than
done. Both groups voiced irritation with the user interface to search e-book
collections and access titles. Each platform worked a little differently and
changed features during the pilot, but much of the frustration stemmed from the
platforms’ interaction with the reading devices. Patrons were using a wide
variety—iPads, desktops and laptops, Kindles, Nooks, smartphones, other tablets—and
some functioned better with one platform than the others. Kindles had the most
problems.
“In
general, there were technical problems downloading the software and getting it
to work, checking out materials to the device. The software platforms were not
intuitive,” commented one librarian on the survey. “People gave up after a few
unsuccessful attempts.”
The
selection of titles was also disappointing to both librarians and borrowers.
Overall, patrons were seeking popular fiction, but there were also comments
about limited academic and research content.
Survey
participation was low and the age of patrons taking advantage of the e-book
pilot tended to skew toward older adults, so the results of the pilot probably
don’t provide a complete picture of digital readers, particularly college
students. However, the difficulties documented in the project surveys reveal
some of the obstacles all libraries face in offering greater access to e-books.
