There is a lot of mainstream hype around eBooks these days. Books are the fastest-growing category in the iTunes App Store; eBook readers are all the rage; and next week marks the 5th annual Read an E-Book Week. In fact, eBooks are such a hot topic, they’re mentioned once every 36 minutes in discussions on blogs, microblogs and other social media sites.
Now, while the occasional person will undertake to read every word of a large reference work – the Encyclopedia Britannica for instance – we understand the difference between reading for pleasure and reading for research.
Reference eBooks don’t create such widespread excitement; but we don’t take it personally. We’re proud to be mentioned once every 10 days or so. And we can’t help but imagine that the growing love and awareness for eBooks in general will ultimately make it easier for you, as librarians, to explain the benefit of having 24/7 online access (without a special reader or hardware) to authoritative reference content. We anticipate your joy at being able to convince patrons that you can provide a true reference search of thousands of encyclopedia entries with the ease and speed of a Wikipedia query.
Will usage of your reference eBooks increase as users become more familiar with the electronic format?
Gale Virtual Reference Library isn’t a reference database but it’s not an eBook as most users know it either. Where do you think Gale Virtual Reference Library fits in?
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