School librarians are much more likely to purchase e-books than teachers, partly because it falls within their school budgets, says new research on digital books in K-12 schools.
The report, “eBooks: K-12 Educators’ Usage and Attitudes,” surveyed 1,300 K-12 educators—about half of which were teachers, and the other half librarians. Of the teachers who reported buying e-books for professional purposes, 70 percent paid for them out of their own pockets, with no help from their schools. In contrast, 92 percent of librarians who purchased e-books reported that they were paid for, at least in part, by their schools.
Forty-four percent of librarians and 40 percent of teachers who have not bought e-books say that the price of e-readers will have to drop before they can afford them. As it currently stands, the most popular e-reader reported among those with e-readers was Amazon’s Kindle, according to the survey.
Those educators who have purchased e-books, both for personal and professional use, seem to be pretty satisfied with them. And about 75 percent of those who have purchased e-books believe that they will have a positive impact on students’ reading comprehension, the survey found.
The full report can be purchased here.
And watch out for the upcoming issue of Digital Directions, coming out in February, which will include an article (that I am currently knee-deep in writing) about this very subject.