Factors Related to E-books Use amongst IT Students

Abstract

This paper describes a case study, which looks at the use of e-books among Information Technology (IT) undergraduates at an academic library in Malaysia. The study aims to investigate on the usage of e-books among IT students and identifies the possible factors that might lead to their use or non-use. It focuses on identifying the places and situations where students access ebooks, their reasons for use or non-use and their preference of using an e-book to printed book. The study employs questionnaire as the data collection instrument. The findings are based on a total of 206 returned questionnaires from IT students who were selected based on programmes and semesters using the stratified random sampling technique. The results revealed that there was positive acceptance of e-books among IT students, even though the level of e-book uses was low (39%). The students became aware of e-book service mainly while visiting the Library website, or were referred to it by their lecturers, friends or the librarians. About 70% rated positively on the ebook service. Users indicated e-books were easy to use, while non-users preferred the printed text and professed lack of knowledge on its use. Generally, both users and non-users of e-books preferred to use the printed version of textbooks especially if the text was continuously used. The majority preferred to use e-versions of reference sources. There were significant difference between past usage of e-books and preference for electronic textbooks and reference books. The student’s use or non-use of e-books was greatly influenced by a number of interacting variables, which comprise their ICT competencies, their cognitive makeup, the degree of user access to the ebooks and the functional or use factors.