Reading hard or soft? Student and teacher preferences of book reading formats at FCC

This session aims to determine the users’ (student and faculty) opinion about their preference of reading books in print or electronic format. It will be helpful for library directors and services librarians of other AMICAL Institutions in making evidence based decisions for book acquisition and promotion.

The readership culture has been evolving over ages and libraries are re-imagining themselves in the 21st century while facing the challenge of acquisition and developing marketing and promotional strategies for diverse reading formats. Hence it is important to ascertain the reading trends and the reasons for choosing such formats among the users. This project is aimed to determine the current book reading trend and reasons for the preferred reading format by undergraduate students and Faculty at FCC. This activity is based on literature review followed by a discussion of results with reference to findings of other international and local studies relevant to the topic. This project is conducted in qualitative manner which aims to gather the real time opinion of users regarding the usage of reading formats and the core factors responsible for their choice of format preference. This session will help attendees, who are facing the same challenges of the book acquisition (either print or electronic) in this competitive age and seek insight regarding the rightful allocation of book budget at their respective institutions. Interview method is used to gain the opinion from undergraduate students and faculty.

References: - Melcher, A. (2015). ATG Special Report: Academic library survey on eBooks and eBook readers. Against the Grain, 27(1), 22. - Silverman, S. (2014). The book vs. e-book: E-book survey report. South Carolina Libraries, 1(1), 11.