Abrizah Abdullah, et al. (Eds.): ICOLIS 2007, Kuala Lumpur: LISU, FCSIT, 2007:pp 265-275 Factors Related to E-books Use amongst IT Students Roesnita Ismail 1 and A.N. Zainab 2 1 Faculty of Science & Technology, Islamic Science Universiti Malaysia, Bandar Baru Nilai, 78000, Nilai Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia 2 Library and Information Unit, Faculty of Computer Science & Information Technology, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia e-mail: roesnita@yahoo.com; zainab@um.edu.my Abstract This paper describes a case study, which looks at the use of e-books among Information Technology (IT) undergraduates at an academic library in Malaysia. The study aims to investigate on the usage of e-books among IT students and identifies the possible factors that might lead to their use or non-use. It focuses on identifying the places and situations where students access e- books, their reasons for use or non-use and their preference of using an e-book to printed book. The study employs questionnaire as the data collection instrument. The findings are based on a total of 206 returned questionnaires from IT students who were selected based on programmes and semesters using the stratified random sampling technique. The results revealed that there was positive acceptance of e-books among IT students, even though the level of e-book uses was low (39%). The students became aware of e-book service mainly while visiting the Library website, or were referred to it by their lecturers, friends or the librarians. About 70% rated positively on the e- book service. Users indicated e-books were easy to use, while non-users preferred the printed text and professed lack of knowledge on its use. Generally, both users and non-users of e-books preferred to use the printed version of textbooks especially if the text was continuously used. The majority preferred to use e-versions of reference sources. There were significant difference between past usage of e-books and preference for electronic textbooks and reference books. The student’s use or non-use of e-books was greatly influenced by a number of interacting variables, which comprise their ICT competencies, their cognitive makeup, the degree of user access to the e- books and the functional or use factors. Keywords: e-Book; Electronic book; E-book use study; User study; Academic Library; Malaysia. 1. Introduction There are a variety of definitions of e-books in the literature. Anuradha and Usha (2006) noted that how an e-book is defined is based on either its form or content or mode of access or the devices used for reading them. Some defined e-book as text or document or file format of e-book such as Word’s .doc, txt, HTML or XML (Hawkins, 2000; Rao 2005, Ormes, 2002; McKnight and Dearnley, 2003; Vidana, 2003). Other definitions related e-book to the conversion from print into digital form to be read on a computer screen (Saurie and Kaushik, 2001; Desmarais, 1994). Some referred to e-book as both the electronic text as well as the electronic reader device that is required for e-book to be read (Abrew, 2001; Lynch, 2001; Goh, 2002; Grant, 2002). Connaway (2003) defined e-book as a publication that characterized an electronic format, utilizing Internet technology to make it easy to access and use. Rao (2005) referred to e-book content as the intellectual property component, e-book format refers to document or file format, e-book reader refers to software that enables one to read different file format on a variety of hardware types and e-book reading device refers to portable hardware available for reading e-books. Studies on usage of e-books focused more on investigating the features of e-books that the users valued most (Wearden, 1998; Andersen, 2001; Simon, 2001; and Chu, 2003 and Anuradha and Usha, 2006) and giving little emphasis on where, when, why and purpose of using the e-books. For instance, Simon (2001) investigated how students at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, Manhattan had been using the e-book services. He noted that a majority of students used the glossary lookup (65%) and book marking (55%) features,