Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe how, in the spring of 2007, Arizona State University Libraries held a focus group of selected faculty to discover their perceptions and use of electronic books (e‐books) in their research and teaching.Design/methodology/approach – The services of the Institute of Social Sciences Research were employed to recruit and moderate the focus group. Major themes explored were: use of e‐books as textbooks; use of e‐books for personal research; comparison between e‐books and print; disciplinary differences in perceptions of e‐books; and motivators for future use.Findings – Overall, the focus group revealed that faculty had generally unsatisfactory experiences in using e‐books in their research and teaching owing to the unreliability of access, lack of manipulability, and the steep learning curve of the various interfaces. However, most faculty agreed that e‐books would be a very viable and useful alternative if these issues were resolved.Research limitations/implic...
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