Two New Reports on eBooks

The Resource Shelf highlights findings from two recent reports: Library Use of eBooks 2011 Edition  & Student Use of Library E-Book Collections

Looked at just a sneak preview, but found it interesting that:

Only 5.56% of libraries sampled have ever developed a video to explain any facet of Ebook use and only about 19% have developed online tutorials.

Only 13.3% of libraries sampled have incorporated eBook use on Smartphones such as Android, iPhone or Blackberry into info literacy training. (despite the new Gale app available for iPhone!

More than 23% of the libraries in the sample owned some kind of stand alone ebook reading device.

Apparently the ebook phenomenon is really exploding this year.  The complete report gives figures for spending on eBooks in 2010 and anticipated spending for 2011. Also included are library spending plans and current use of eBook reader such as Nook, Reader and Kindle.

2. The Survey of American College Students: Student Use of Library E-Book Collections

Some of the surprising findings shared by Resource Shelf:

• 30.42% of the students in the sample say that they have received any form of in or out of class training from a college librarian in how to use the library's e-book collection.
• Close to a third of the students in the sample were not sure what an e-book was and another 9.5% believed that their library did not have an e-book collection.

An excerpt from this report is available in chart form:

See charts (PDF) that offer up results for the question, "percentage of students who have ever received any form of in or out of class training from a college librarian in how to use the college library ebook collection

If the numbers for ebook training are this low for the American college population, it seems realistic to assume that the numbers are even lower for American high schools.