Examining College Students’ Reading Behaviors and Needs for Ebook Readers

This study investigates college students’ reading behaviors and attitudes toward print and electronic carriers of books. With the prosperity and variety of ebook readers currently, it is important to understand the genuine needs of the users to better leverage the features and functions of the ebook readers. The methodology of survey research is conducted to explore 76 undergraduate students’ experiences, preferences and appraisals toward reading via the print books and ebook readers. Generally the college students possess positive attitudes toward and are willing to take advantage of the ebook and ebook reader services provided by libraries, but the current rate of use is low. The results suggested that student adoption of ebook readers are affected by their goals of reading. The college students prefer ebook readers significantly for leisure reading, and highly demand the functionality of multimedia presentations and file management. When reading academic contexts, the college students preferred hardcovers and online ebooks via the Web browser, and they value the functions of searching, marking and file management on ebook readers especially. [Article content in Chinese]