Community engagement on an unprecedented scale
11th February, 2008The JISC national e-books observatory project just keeps on getting better! Not only do we have over 125 Higher Education institutions participating in the project (that’s 75% of the all the UK Higher Education community), we have received over 14,000 responses to the staff and student survey and there is still a week to go!
We were expecting a participation rate of about 70 Higher Education institutions and so you can imagine how thrilled we are to have over 125 taking part in the project. It has been interesting to see that some institutions that do not even have courses in one of the four subject areas are subscribing. This just goes to show that there is a real thirst for knowledge about what staff and students are doing with course texts online and what they want to do. Understanding user needs is central to providing a quality service and with budget pressures, increasing student numbers and high expectations, librarians can see the potential of providing their students with access to their course texts centrally through the library.
And it appears that it is not just librarians who are interested! We have received over 14,000 (and rising) responses to the first user survey being done as part of the Deep Log Analysis study. The survey is gathering data to provide an initial user benchmark regarding a range of e-book issues, for example, the survey will benchmark staff and student’s awareness, use and attitudes towards e-books. The response rate to the survey makes it one of the largest, if not the largest, LIS surveys ever undertaken in the UK.
The JISC national e-books observatory project is bringing together the whole higher education community in the search for knowledge and understanding. This high level of engagement shows that we are ready to experiment, that we want to get it right, that we want new models that are based on what users are really doing not what we think they are doing and we want it to be sustainable. If this is not a big enough indication to the e-book publishers that now is the time for them to strip off, be brave and jump right in, well then, I don’t know what is!