Down the Superhighway in a Single Tome: Examining the Impact of Book Format on Borrowing Interactions

Many readers claim that the uptake of ebooks by libraries hampers their information seeking by not affording them the opportunity to browse. Conversely, readers value the convenience of anywhere-anytime access offered by ebooks. This paper aims to examine the impact of book format on borrowing patterns across a book collection. We do this by comparing usage in print and ebook collections from the same library, thus ensuring the same user population and the same discovery system. We discover a number of key differences, including borrowing frequency and number of books borrowed on a single occasion.