Librarians' views on five years of ebooks

To celebrate its first five years in ebook production, Springer has consulted with a number of stakeholders to produce the report STM eBooks: Librarian Perspectives on the First 5 years.  The report outlines the challenges and opportunities that ebooks present to key stakeholders.Key findings - end users

• Technology innovations including interactive video and the ability to make notes are highly valued by users
• Lack of standardisation across platforms confuses users
• Complex sign-on processes are a barrier to use
• Some technical books are difficult to read on certain devices

• Concern about long term availability of ebooks
• Need to develop ROI measures for ebooks
• New roles may develop for librarians - as information literacy experts or as one participant outlined ‘as the interface between patron and the publisher'
• Improved metadata from publishers will help improve discoverability

• Ebooks will continue to develop more elements that the print work cannot feature, including supplementary materials and interactive content
• Increased emphasis on usage statistics to help manage collections and anticipate user needs
• Development of more flexible access and pricing models
• Standardisation of metadata
• Mobile devices will continue to inform the way ebooks are developed
• Demands of users who will expect easy 24-hour access to high quality content will shape developments