Use and Acceptance of E-Books Among Undergraduate Students

Abstract

The study aimed at establishing the use and acceptance of e-books by book readers in a Namibian university. Applying a mixed methods approach, a survey questionnaire was administered to 35 undergraduate students initially and in a second phase telephonic interviews were conducted with 12 purposively selected surveyed students based on their questionnaire responses to get a deeper understanding of student experience utilising e-books. Findings revealed that the use and acceptance of e-books in Namibia is still in its infancy. Although there is an awareness of e-books among students, most of them prefer print books. One of the reasons for low e-book usage was due to insufficient training on how to access them. It was recommended that faculty officers at this university collaborate with librarians to ensure prescribed e-books are purchased or subscribed to and adequate Information Literacy training is provided to students. Future research that focuses on expanding the sample size to include all faculties, benchmarked against different universities nationally and internationally will give further insight into e-book uptake in the digital age in Africa and globally. Further studies also need to be conducted to establish why about 14% of students don’t read books (print or electronic) at all whiles in school.