E-Books in the Higher Education Classroom and Library

[Lori Bell]

> Final Evaluative Report on "Academic Libraries Take
> An
> E-Look at E-Books" Available on the Web
> 
> With funding from an Educate and Automate grant from
> the Illinois State Library, Spoon River College and
> Eureka College in Illinois participated in an
> electronic book project involving the college
> libraries and two English classes. The final report
> was compiled by Tom Peters, Project Evaluator;
> Director of the Center for Library Initiatives,
> Committee on Institutional Cooperation.
> (tpeters at cic.uiuc.edu)The report is available at
> http://www.geocities.com/lbell927/index.htm
> 
> Comments on the report can be sent to Peters; Lori
> Bell, Co- Project Director (lbell927 at yahoo.com);
> Virginia McCoy, co-Project Director
> (vmccoy at eureka.edu); Loren Logsdon English Professor
> (llogsdon at eureka.edu) or Jan Hardy
> (jhardy at src.cc.il.us)
> 
> For an eight-week period in September and October of
> 2001 lower division undergraduate students enrolled
> in
> English courses at two Illinois institutions of
> higher
> education used handheld, portable e-book devices to
> read primary literary texts assigned as part of
> their
> course reading. The 22 students in the English class
> at Spoon River College read The Awakening by Kate
> Chopin on the Franklin eBookMan 901. Spoon River
> College (http://www.spoonrivercollege.net/) is a
> public, coeducational, two-year community college.
> Twelve students in an English class at Eureka
> College
> read Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson on the
> Gemstar/RCA REB 1100. Eureka College
> (http://www.eureka.edu) is a private, coeducational,
> four-year undergraduate institution.
> 
> The primary objective of the project was to learn
> what
> happens when a college library provides pre-loaded
> course-related content on handheld, portable e-book
> devices directly to the hands of undergraduate
> students and their professors for their use in
> actual
> course-related readings. After actual integration of
> these devices into the classroom and the library,
> the
> experiences, impressions, and suggestions of
> students,
> professors, and librarians were collected and
> analyzed. The project team was interested not only
> in
> the overall acceptance and usefulness of the e-book
> devices, but also in the use of specific features
> and
> the real-life challenges of using e-books in higher
> education environments.
> 


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