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E-Books in Swedish Public Libraries: Policy Implications

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 8092))

Abstract

The aims of the paper are: review the situation of e-books delivery in the Swedish public libraries (as it looked at the end of 2012); identify the barriers that public libraries encounter in providing access to e-books; highlight the policy-related problems of e-book provision through public libraries. A survey was carried out in October, 2012 of all public libraries in Sweden. 291 questionnaires were issued. 185 were completed, response rate was 63.3%. The provision of an e-book service has arisen as a result of either demand or an ideological belief that the ethos of democratic values and equality of access requires libraries to offer material in all media. Librarians find the situation of e-books provision through libraries unsatisfactory: the provider of titles removes them from the catalogue without warning or explanation, there are too few titles for children and students, and access to popular titles is delayed.

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References

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© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Maceviciute, E., Wilson, T.D. (2013). E-Books in Swedish Public Libraries: Policy Implications. In: Aalberg, T., Papatheodorou, C., Dobreva, M., Tsakonas, G., Farrugia, C.J. (eds) Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries. TPDL 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8092. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40501-3_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40501-3_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-40500-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-40501-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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