We’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on eBooks. Now, how are we going to get people to use them?

We introduced our library patrons to electronic journals about a decade ago; they seemed to catch on quickly, but we are not having the same kind of success with eBooks. This is partly because of the way people find and use electronic journals as compared to finding eBooks. People use an index such as PubMed or Web of Science to look for journal articles on a certain subject. The index returns a number of hits and, thanks to the link resolver, the searcher can immediately access the full text of an article in any electronic journal to which the library has a subscription. Some book chapters are indexed in these databases, but this is not the best way to find eBooks. Therefore, we have to come up with our own strategy to help patrons find and use them.

The first essential step to encourage the use of eBooks is to build up a critical mass. At the best of times, it seems that finding an eBook is like searching for a needle in a haystack, but if an institution has only a handful of eBooks, your patrons will be unlikely to think of them as a useful resource. Many publishers and aggregators now offer subject collections of eBooks at a very reasonable price, while others offer an à la carte method of purchase or subscription. Libraries can easily find books to suit their collections policy, audience, and budget.

Unlike print books, eBooks have no physical presence and therefore cannot be found in the book stacks by a browsing patron. If they are not in the OPAC, they are invisible and will not be used. For this reason, it is vital that the records for your eBooks are added to the public catalogue as quickly as possible. Because technical services departments have a workflow based on print books, this is not always as easy as it sounds. When presented with a package of several thousand eBooks, or an eBook package that grows by hundreds of books per month, workflow and sometimes staffing have to be adjusted to effectively deal with this new environment.

Not only do eBooks have to be added to the public catalogue, they have to be easy to find. Imagine that you are a student, at home, past midnight, looking for a couple of chapters to read in order to write a paper which is due in a few hours. You know there are eBooks in the OPAC, but how do you find them? Can you just type “Napoleonic wars eBook” as a keyword search and get results? Has the library provided prominently displayed instructions on how to search for eBooks? If the instructions are not easy to find, or are so complicated that only a librarian can follow them, how can we expect our patrons to find and use our eBooks?

Publicity is another key step in promoting our eBooks. I was talking to a student the other day and was surprised that she knew nothing about one of our bigger eBook packages. I know we publicized it widely when we purchased it. Oh, but that was two years ago, when this student was still in high school. We have to remember to promote our eBooks constantly and extensively. There are a number of ways we can do this:

• News items on a library blog or newsletter. Highlight each new package you acquire, or whenever new material is added to an existing package. Even “The library recommends” column can be used to inform and remind patrons that you offer books in electronic format.
• When library staff meet with faculty to let them know about new services at the library, this can include new eBooks or eBook packages and a brief description of what eBooks the library offers with a demo of how to find them. A typical response is “Wow! I didn’t know you had all this!”
• You probably have RSS feeds to let patrons know about new book acquisitions. Ensure that the feeds also include new eBooks, or have a feed just for eBooks. Promote your RSS feeds, too.
• Enlist the help of faculty members. Ask them to make one or more of their required readings a chapter from an eBook the library owns (preferably one that allows multiple concurrent users). This introduces students to eBooks and helps them become comfortable searching for and accessing them.
• We use a product called LibGuides, which are subject-specific web pages created by library staff. On them, we can list top journals and books, in either print or electronic format, databases, web resources, etc. The electronic journals, eBooks, electronic databases, and web resources all include embedded URLs so patrons can go directly to the resource. Those eBooks featured in the guides are often heavily used and new eBooks can easily be showcased.
• Tell new students about eBooks during library orientation. And because students can’t remember everything they hear during orientation, create a brief online tutorial showing how to find eBooks and display the tutorial prominently on your library website. In this way, you can provide instruction that will be available when it is needed.
• Create an eBook FAQ page on your library website. This might include links to publishers’ eBook websites, instructions on how to find eBooks to which your institution has access, searching tips, and information about access for eBook readers. (Although most of our eBooks are currently read on a computer screen, more and more of them can be viewed on any reader which supports PDF format).
• With an easily created online and/or print survey you can ask your patrons about their use, or non-use, of eBooks. You might ask them if they’ve ever used an eBook and, if so, how they found it. What features do they look for in eBooks? What could the library do to make eBooks easier to find and use? The results of your survey will help you formulate a plan to provide your patrons with easier, better access.

We know that there are some instances where eBooks will not be heavily used – novels, for example, which are read cover to cover. But many eBooks have advantages over print books; they’re available 24/7, to more than one user at a time, whenever they need them, wherever they are -- in the lab, at home, or halfway around the world. When the library promotes eBooks and makes them easy to find, we’ll see a significant increase in the use of eBooks.