ebrary Announces Downloading Options (iOS, Kindle, Other Devices) & Results of Offline Reading Survey

From an ebrary News Release:

ebrary today announced the ability to download e-books onto multiple devices including the Kindle, iPad, iPhone, laptops and other devices. Additionally, the company announced a dedicated mobile application is in development and slated to ship later this year.

Downloading capabilities will be available at no extra cost to academic, corporate, school, or government libraries.

The growing demand for downloading has been substantiated by a recent ebrary survey of more than 1,000 librarians, which indicated 92% found providing offline access to e-books more or equally important than providing online access.
“The ability to keep pace with the ever-evolving ways that patrons expect to find and use authoritative information is clearly important to the library and publishing community,” said Dr. Allen McKiel, Dean of Library Services at Western Oregon University.
Additional key findings from ebrary’s Download Survey of librarians include the following:

• 32% responded that their libraries currently provide offline reading options
• 19% stated that their libraries provided tethered access (not downloaded) to mobile devices
• 95% did not think that tethered mobile access obviated the need for offline mobile access

Searching within a title, selecting page font, and navigating the table of content ranked the highest for desired functionality for offline mobile access.

Anyone may register to receive a complimentary copy of the download survey and McKiel’s paper.
Read the Complete News Release

Filed under: Government Libraries, Journal Articles, Libraries, News, Patrons and Users, Publishing