Survey indicates students would use e-books more often if available

From a press release dated 6/24/2008:

ebrary® announced the results of its first 2008 Global Student E-book Survey completed by nearly 6,500 students throughout the world, representing approximately 400 individual institutions. Register to receive a free digital copy. Designed by more than 150 college and university librarians throughout the world, the wide-scale survey explores students’ usage and perceptions of e-books. ebrary plans to periodically repeat the survey to compare how e-book usage and attitudes among students change over time.

Key findings of the 2008 Global Student E-book Survey include the following:

• On research or class assignments, e-book usage is on par with print books, with almost equal numbers of students using each type.
• Fifty-one percent of students would “very often or often” opt to use electronic versions of books over print versions, compared to 32% who “sometimes” prefer e-books and 17% who always use the print version.
• E-books rank among the top resources students consider trustworthy, along with print materials such as books, textbooks, reference (dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps), and journals.
• Google and other search engines are indicated by the highest number of students for use in research or class assignments. Other top resources include e-books, print books, e-reference resources such as online dictionaries, encyclopedias and maps, and Wikipedia.
• Fifty-seven percent of students view instruction in information literacy as very important, compared with 38% who consider it somewhat important and only 5% who find it not important.