Mama Don't Take My Codex/Tome Away: Strategies/Best Practices for Partnering New/Reluctant Users with Academic eBooks

Abstract

Many readers of academic books prefer reading on paper. In many of our contexts, however, avoiding academic eBooks is becoming less and less of an option as students (as well as other users) have few viable opportunities for accessing print-on-paper information if that content is already available to them in electronic form. This session primarily considerrf ways in which librarians and information professionals can demystify and make useful the academic eBook for the (disinclined) user.

Currently, we have a mixed bag of experiences regarding how the academic eBooks in our collections operate and we don’t yet know what the academic eBook of the future will look like or be able to offer to our readers. This session explored some options for both preparing the uninitiated for the variety of eBooks they will encounter, as well as consider some point-of-service strategies that may prevent a research conversation from ending abruptly when paper resources on a topic are scarce. How can we best help the resources that we have access to currently be more informative for our readers?