Medical students and residents appreciate ebooks’ convenience, but prefer the print book reading experience

Author:

Watson Erin M.1ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Leslie and Irene Dubé Health Sciences Library University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon Saskatchewan Canada

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundIncreasingly, libraries buy medical monographs as ebooks, but that may not be what medical students and residents want. Some studies have shown that they prefer print books for some types of reading. On the other hand, for participants in distributed medical programs, ebooks are more accessible.ObjectivesTo determine whether medical students and residents at an institution with a distributed medical education program prefer medical ebooks or print books.MethodsIn February 2019, 844 medical students and residents were invited to complete an online questionnaire on their format preferences.ResultsTwo hundred thirty‐two students and residents responded. Most preferred electronic format for reading a few pages, but print for entire books. Respondents preferred ebooks because they were immediately available, searchable and could be used on the go, and print books because they strained users' eyes less, facilitated absorption of the text and could be held in users’ hands. The location of respondents and year of study had little effect on responses.DiscussionLibraries should consider buying quick reference and large, heavy textbooks as ebooks and pocket‐sized or shorter, single‐topic titles, in print format.ConclusionsLibraries have a responsibility to make both print and ebooks available to their users.

Publisher

Wiley

Subject

Health Information Management,Library and Information Sciences,Health Informatics

Cited by 2 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

1. Tips from the trenches;Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship;2023-10-02

2. Discovering novel barriers to eBook implementation;The Clinical Teacher;2023-08-23

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