E-books in the Municipal Library of Prague: awareness, reader preferences and perceived value of services
Vol.15,No.2(2023)
Purpose – The article summarizes the results of a research focused on the acquisition and utilization of e-books, reader behavior, and the perceived value of e-books. The study builds upon a series of questionnaire surveys among registered readers of the Municipal Library of Prague and allows for a comparison of the situation in the post-pandemic year 2022 with previous years.
Design / methodology / approach – The survey was conducted through online quantitative questionnaire survey (CAWI). A total of 1156 respondents participated in the questionnaire survey conducted in 2022.
Results – The majority of respondents still prefer printed books, and the utilization rate of electronic books remains approximately at the same levels as in the previous year. The observed willingness to pay for downloading and borrowing e-books suggests that public libraries specializing in providing digital literature often possess their own perceived value in competition with commercial services offering cultural products and services. This perceived value enables libraries to quantify the social benefits of these relatively new services.
Originality / value – The article presents the results of original research. The presented results will enable further development of e-books and library services built upon them.
e-books; questionnaire; user needs; library services; quantitative research
Pavel
Sociores; Městská knihovna v Praze
Pracuje v oblasti sociologického průzkumu a průzkumu trhu od roku 1999, především pro nevládní a příspěvkové organizace. Dlouhodobě – od roku 2009 – spolupracuje s Městskou knihovnou v Praze, realizoval také průzkumy spokojenosti uživatelů pro další veřejné knihovny.
Baker, D., & Ellis, L. (2021). Libraries, digital information, and COVID: Practical applications and approaches to challenge and change. In Libraries, Digital Information, and COVID (pp. 1–12). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-88493-8.00010-0
Blummer, B. (2006). E-Books Revisited: The Adoption of Electronic Books by Special, Academic, and Public Libraries. Internet Reference Services Quarterly, 11(2), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1300/J136v11n02_01
D’Ambra, J., Wilson, C. S., & Akter, S. (2019). Affordance theory and e-books: evaluating the e-reading experience using netnography. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 23(5–6), 873–892. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-017-1086-1
Griffiths, J.-M., & King, D. W. (2013). Methods and metrics for assessing the return on investment of public, academic and special libraries. In A Handbook of Digital Library Economics (pp. 155–173). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-1-84334-620-3.50013-1
Hamilton, M. (2021). Look to the future now, it’s only just begun. The changing role of libraries during and after COVID-19. In Libraries, Digital Information, and COVID (pp. 281–289). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-88493-8.00024-0
Kristensen, L.-B. (2019). How to Choose a Format: Consumers’ Evaluation in Choosing a Format for Reading Books in Norway. The Journal of Electronic Publishing, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0022.102
Lorenz, M. (2023). K historii webové knihy. In L. Zbiejczuk, M. Málek, & J. Martinek (Eds.), Digitální transformace čtení (pp. 20–52). Masaryk University Press. https://doi.org/10.5817/CZ.MUNI.M280-0345-2023-1
Městská knihovna v Praze. (2023a). Efektivní knihovna v digitálním prostředí: Metodické doporučení. https://issuu.com/mestskaknihovnavpraze/docs/efektivn__knihovna_v_digit_ln_m_prost_ed__-_metodi
Městská knihovna v Praze. (2023b). Hodnota knihovny. https://www.hodnota-knihovny.cz/
Mizrachi, D., & Salaz, A. M. (2022). Reading Format Attitudes in the Time of COVID. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 48(4), 102552. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2022.102552
Mizrachi, D., Salaz, A. M., Kurbanoglu, S., Boustany, J., & on behalf of the ARFIS Research Group. (2018). Academic reading format preferences and behaviors among university students worldwide: A comparative survey analysis. PLOS ONE, 13(5), e0197444. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197444
Nov, O., & Ye, C. (2009). Resistance to change and the adoption of digital libraries: An integrative model. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(8), 1702–1708. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21068
Řehák, T. (2015). Neocenitelné služby knihoven a jak je ocenit. Městská knihovna v Praze. https://www.mlp.cz/cz/dokumenty/?act=get&check=f7f156c3df31369dde6845e4954233d7&id=1482&noinc=1
Řehák, T. (2023). Neocenitelné služby knihoven. https://dspace.cuni.cz/handle/20.500.11956/179477
Serholt, S., Eriksson, E., Dalsgaard, P., Bats, R., & Ducros, A. (2018). Opportunities and challenges for technology development and adoption in public libraries. Proceedings of the 10th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 311–322. https://doi.org/10.1145/3240167.3240198
Stejskal, J. (2013). Měření hodnoty veřejných služeb. Wolters Kluwer ČR.
Stejskal, J., Hájek, P., & Řehák, T. (2019). The economic value of library services for children: The case of the Czech public libraries. Library & Information Science Research, 41(3), 100963. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2019.100963.
Zbiejczuk Suchá, L., Cibin, R., Kocurek, J., Málek, M., Martinek, J., Vojtíšek, V., & Bartošová, J. (2022). From undistracted to instant reading and back: Prototyping a new digital library service. Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries, 11(3), 553–572.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright © 2023 Pavel Černý