Medical students and residents appreciate ebooks’ convenience, but prefer the print book reading experience

Abstract

Background

Increasingly, libraries buy medical monographs as ebooks, but that may not be what medical students and residents want. Some studies have shown that they prefer print books for some types of reading. On the other hand, for participants in distributed medical programs, ebooks are more accessible.

Objectives

To determine whether medical students and residents at an institution with a distributed medical education program prefer medical ebooks or print books.

Methods

In February 2019, 844 medical students and residents were invited to complete an online questionnaire on their format preferences.

Results

Two hundred thirty-two students and residents responded. Most preferred electronic format for reading a few pages, but print for entire books. Respondents preferred ebooks because they were immediately available, searchable and could be used on the go, and print books because they strained users' eyes less, facilitated absorption of the text and could be held in users’ hands. The location of respondents and year of study had little effect on responses.

Discussion

Libraries should consider buying quick reference and large, heavy textbooks as ebooks and pocket-sized or shorter, single-topic titles, in print format.

Conclusions

Libraries have a responsibility to make both print and ebooks available to their users.