圖書館事業專欄／中文電子書在香港: 香港大學及香港理工大學／高玉華；李梅 | Chinese E-books in Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong (HKU) and Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HK PolyU) / Angela Ko; Mei Li

Hong Kong has a population of 6.9 million, of which 95% are ethnic Chinese and their mother tongue is Chinese, mainly Cantonese [1]. Chinese language is the chief medium of daily communications in Hong Kong. Being a former British colony, Hong Kong has English, one of the major international languages, the main instructional language for its higher educational institutions. Students are trained to be bilingual in schools. Both Chinese and English are official languages of Hong Kong. Hong Kong has become a special administrative region of China since 1997, the economic and political ties between Hong Kong and Mainland China increased tremendously. Mastering Putonghua, the official spoken language of China has become vital for students for their development and future careers. The demand for Chinese language materials in research institutions has increased since the early 1990s, especially those published in Mainland China. The libraries have joined their efforts in applying for public funding to establish a central storage facility to house 5.6 million volumes of books [2]. There has also been an interest in e-books because of the space shortage problems experienced by all eight government funded university libraries in Hong Kong. E-books are considered to be one of the important solutions to the rising demand of the Chinese language materials and to the space storage. In Hong Kong, the information technology skill of faculty and students is not an obstacle to the use of e-books. Computer literacy rates within tertiary education institutions in Hong Kong are very high. Universities provide various kinds of support to students in using information technology. For instance, the University of Hong Kong started the Student Notebook PC Ownership Program in 1998 to assist first-year undergraduate students who enter the University to own a personal computer. The programme helps students both technically and financially. Hong Kong Polytechnic University first launched its annual notebook purchase scheme in 2000. It aims to help students acquire their own notebooks to support their learning activities. Professors encourage students to hand in assignments electronically and they distribute handouts and reference materials electronically. Libraries also provide training and instructional support on the use of IT and electronic resources. HKU and HK PolyU purchased their first Chinese e-book databases in 2003 and in 2005 respectively. The e-book collection of HK PolyU amounted to 115,748 volumes whereas HKU celebrated its 1 millionth e-book [3] in 2006. Of the milli