Hamid R. Jamali

What do faculty and students really think about e‐books?

Purpose - The purpose of this article is to report on a large-scale survey that was carried Out to assess academic users awareness, perceptions and existing levels of use of e-books. The survey also seeks to find out about the purposes to which electronic books were put, and to obtain an understanding of the most effective library marketing and communication channels.Design/methodology/approach - An e-mail invitation to participate in the survey was distributed to all UCL staff and students (approximately 27,000) in November 2006, and 1,818 completions were received, an effective response rate of at least 6.7 per cent. Statistical analyses were carried out on the data using Software Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).Findings - The survey findings point to various ways in which user uptake and acceptance of e-books may be encouraged. Book discovery behaviour, a key issue for publishers and librarians in both print and electronic environments, emerges as a critical focus for service delivery and enhancement.Originality/value - The survey is part of an action research project, CIBERs SuperBook, that will further investigate the issues raised in this initial benchmarking survey using deep log analysis and qualitative methods. The paper partly fills the gap in the literature on e-books which has mainly focused on usage and not the users.

Using ICT with people with special education needs : what the literature tells us

Purpose – To provide a review of the past studies on use of information and communications technology (ICT) for people with special education needs (SEN) to inform a major research project on using ICT to facilitate self‐advocacy and learning for SEN learners.Design/methodology/approach – Literature review, encompassing academic journals indexed in education, information science and social sciences databases, books, grey literature (including much internet‐based material), and government reports. Information was gathered on the perceived benefits of ICT in SEN, and the use of some specific applications with people having various conditions. A number of usability studies, mainly Internet and web technologies, are also outlined.Findings – Although the literature shows a great number of ICT initiatives for people with all kinds of disabilities, there has been a surprising lack of research into the usability of the various applications developed, and even less concerning those with learning difficulties. The ...

The use and users of scholarly e‐journals: a review of log analysis studies

Purpose – To provide a review of the log analysis studies of use and users of scholarly electronic journals.Design/methodology/approach – The advantages and limitations of log analysis are described and then past studies of e‐journals use and users that applied this methodology are critiqued. The results of these studies will be very briefly compared with some survey studies. Those aspects of online journals use and users studies that log analysis can investigate well and those aspects that log analysis can not disclose enough information about are highlighted.Findings – The review indicates that although there is a debate about reliability of the results of log analysis, this methodology has great potential for studying online journals use and their users information seeking behaviour.Originality/value – This paper highlights the strengths and weaknesses of log analysis for studying digital journals and raises a couple of questions to be investigated by further studies.

What deep log analysis tells us about the impact of big deals: case study OhioLINK

– This article presents the early findings of an exploratory deep log analysis of journal usage on OhioLINK, conducted as part of the MaxData project funded by the US Institute of Museum and Library Services. OhioLINK, the original “big deal”, provides a single digital platform of nearly 6,000 full‐text journal for more than 600,000 people in the state of Ohio. The purpose of the paper is not only to present findings from the deep log analysis of journal usage on OhioLINK, but, arguably more importantly, to try test a new method of analysing online information user behaviour – deep log analysis., – The raw server logs were obtained for the period June 2004 to December 2004. For this exploratory study one month (October) of the on‐campus usage logs and seven months of the off‐campus transaction logs were analysed., – During this period approximately 1,215,000 items were viewed on campus in October 2004 and 1,894,000 items viewed off campus between June and December 2004. The paper presents a number of usage analyses including: number of journals used, titles of journals used, use over time, a returnee analysis and a special analysis of subject, date and method of access., – The research findings help libraries evaluate the efficiency of big deal and one‐stop shopping for scholarly journals and also investigate their users information seeking behaviours., – The research is a part of efforts to test the applications of a new methodology, deep log analysis, for use and user studies. It also represents the most substantial independent analysis of, possibly, the most important and significant of the journal big deals ever conducted.

Viewing and reading behaviour in a virtual environment - The full-text download and what can be read into it

Purpose n n n n– This article aims to focus on usage data in respect to full‐text downloads of journal articles, which is considered an important usage (satisfaction) metric by librarians and publishers. The purpose is to evaluate the evidence regarding full‐text viewing by pooling together data on the full‐text viewing of tens of thousands of users studied as part of a number of investigations of e‐journal databases conducted during the Virtual Scholar research programme. n n n n nDesign/methodology/approach n n n n– The paper reviews the web logs of a number of electronic journal libraries including OhioLINK and ScienceDirect using Deep Log Analysis, which is a more sophisticated form of transactional log analysis. The frequency, characteristics and diversity of full‐text viewing are examined. The article also features an investigation into the time spent online viewing full‐text articles in order to get a clearer understanding of the significance of full‐text viewing, especially in regard to reading. n n n n nFindings n n n n– The main findings are that there is a great deal of variety amongst scholars in their full‐text viewing habits and that a large proportion of views are very cursory in nature, although there is survey evidence to suggest that reading goes on offline. n n n n nOriginality/value n n n n– This is the first time that full‐text viewing evidence is studied on such a large scale.

Open access in context: a user study

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to examine the impact on usage of the journal Nucleic Acids Research (NAR) moving to an open access model. A major objective was to examine the impact of open access in the context of other initiatives that have improved accessibility to scholarly journals. The study also aims to demonstrate the potential of deep log analysis for monitoring change in usage over time.Design/methodology/approach – Data were gathered from the logs for the period 2003‐June 2005 and analysed using deep log methods. The data were analysed to provide the following information on use: type of item viewed; usage over time; usage for individual journal issues; usage per type of article; age of article. Usage analyses were further examined with regard to the following user characteristics: subscriber/non‐subscriber; referrer link employed, organisational affiliation; geographical location.Findings – The analysis showed that the rise in use of NAR over the survey period (140 per cent) could l...

UK scholarly e-book usage: A landmark survey

Purpose – This JISC funded UK National E‐Books Observatory study is a benchmarking survey of e‐book usage and perceptions in more than 120 participating universities. The paper aims to present the results that investigated: use of e‐books in general (methods of obtaining e‐books, reasons for using, viewing/reading behaviour in connection with e‐books); use of e‐books provided by the library; use of JISC collection texts (use and awareness); use of the library and print material in general.Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on an online survey which was conducted between 18 January and 1 March 2008, over which period 22,437 full or partial responses were received.Findings – The study shows that e‐book penetration is very strong (61.8 per cent of all students are already using them in connection with their scholarly work, as teachers or students), so the e‐book revolution has already happened but clearly it has some way to go.Originality/value – The paper presents the results of the biggest su...

Health information for the consumer: NHS vs the BBC

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate of the results of a survey which asked people where they went online for their health information, why and what success they had. The prime purpose of the questionnaire was to obtain information on the audience for health information web sites and to obtain feedback as to what they used online health sites for. The focus was on two major publicly funded health internet sites: NHS Direct Online and the BBC web site.Design/methodology/approach – An online survey was carried out with a population of internet users in the UK in the winter of 2004, yielding a sample of nearly 1,000 (923) people and a response rate of 4.4 per cent was achieved.Findings – The survey identified that indeed both sites were well used although their users were very different in terms of how they arrived at each site and in terms of what they were looking for. Outcomes resulting from using the sites are discussed and compared. Though outcomes differed between NHS Direct Online and th...

Communication and information‐seeking behavior of PhD students in physicists and astronomy

As a part of a wider doctoral research, this paper deals with the communication and information-seeking behavior of research (PhD) students in physics and astronomy. Based on a qualitative case study of PhD students in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London, this study seeks to derive behavioral patterns in information-seeking activities of PhD students. The study aims to investigate the intradisciplinary differences in information-seeking activities of physicists and astronomers. The findings show the high reliance of PhD students in physics and astronomy on electronic journals and their low use of libraries. The findings reveal differences in the information-seeking patterns of students who conduct theoretical research and those of whom are involved in experimental research. The research highlights the need for the study of small subject communities within academic disciplines instead of studying users in a broad subject area such as physics as one single domain.

Viewing and reading behaviour in a virtual environment: The full-text download and what can be read into it

Purpose n n n n– This article aims to focus on usage data in respect to full‐text downloads of journal articles, which is considered an important usage (satisfaction) metric by librarians and publishers. The purpose is to evaluate the evidence regarding full‐text viewing by pooling together data on the full‐text viewing of tens of thousands of users studied as part of a number of investigations of e‐journal databases conducted during the Virtual Scholar research programme. n n n n nDesign/methodology/approach n n n n– The paper reviews the web logs of a number of electronic journal libraries including OhioLINK and ScienceDirect using Deep Log Analysis, which is a more sophisticated form of transactional log analysis. The frequency, characteristics and diversity of full‐text viewing are examined. The article also features an investigation into the time spent online viewing full‐text articles in order to get a clearer understanding of the significance of full‐text viewing, especially in regard to reading. n n n n nFindings n n n n– The main findings are that there is a great deal of variety amongst scholars in their full‐text viewing habits and that a large proportion of views are very cursory in nature, although there is survey evidence to suggest that reading goes on offline. n n n n nOriginality/value n n n n– This is the first time that full‐text viewing evidence is studied on such a large scale.