Electronic Books in Libraries : Librarians’ and Users’ Opinions of Electronic Books according to Interviews and Dialogues

The purpose of this paper is to describe how librarians andusers think of electronic books in libraries. My questions are:-What are electronic books, and how do they work?-How has electronic books been implemented by librariansin the libraries and on the libraries’ websites?-How do users describe their view of electronic books?-How do the librarians and users think of electronic book inthe future?To be able to answer these questions I have studied relevantliterature, made qualitative interviews with two librarians attwo similar libraries and I had dialogues with several usersElectronic books were introduced 2002 at the two libraries.In the beginning the libraries made different types ofmarketing, but today they only have the website withinformation. Their purpose was to try this out and offer theusers a new media. So far, there are few users who borrowthese books, and maybe it depends on technical conditions.According to the dialogues I had, most of the users have noidea what electronic books are. The advantages of electronicbooks, according to the users, are a fast way to reach a book,it is cheap and you do not have to return the book. Thedrawbacks are a limited choice of books Some of the usersthought they were difficult to use and preferred books withprinted text.However, both librarians and users think that electronicbooks will develop in different ways.Uppsatsnivå: