Preferred book formats in an academic medical center.

Learning more about when and why medical students, faculty, and clinical staff use e-books, as opposed to print books, is an expanding area of research for health sciences librarians. Several studies have highlighted the heavy use of health sciences titles in campus e-book collections [1–5] and the book format preferences of medical and other health sciences students [2, 6, 7]. A recent case study by Shurtz and von Isenburg is one of the first to explore e-book use in both health sciences educational and clinical settings [8]. As of June 2010, The Ohio State University (OSU) Prior Health Sciences Library offered more than 6,000 health and life sciences e-books. E-book usage has increased every year driven by Core25 Books, a browsable e-book promotions tool developed at the Prior Library, the ability to link to e-book chapters via the online course management system, and the distribution of the latest in mobile device technologies by OSU to incoming health sciences students and residents. During recent patron-driven e-book selection projects conducted at OSU, medical and life sciences books ranked at the top of subjects selected. Even with the growing emphasis on e-books at OSU, many questions remained about format usability and customer preferences. This exploratory study proposed to: (1) identify the book format preferences of customers in education, research, and patient care settings of an academic health sciences center; (2) discover factors that influence customer format selection; and (3) offer suggestions to librarians involved in the selection and delivery of health sciences books.