The use of e-books is increasing at the University of Tampere

Kai Halttunen thinks that tablets and e-readers are best for browsing e-books because you can use them to read books in the conventional style, for example relaxing in an armchair. (Photograph: Jonne Renvall).

The textbooks that are required reading in degree programmes are increasingly also available as e-books.

According to the Tampere University Library, the share of electronic textbooks in the syllabuses in the academic year 2012-2013 was 24.2 percent. 32.8 percent of the English language textbooks were available electronically and the corresponding figure was 14 percent for books in Finnish.

This statistic was compiled in January 2013.

The smaller number of Finnish books is because Finnish e-books do not have an organisational license as often as books that are published in English.

In 2010, the share of e-books in the syllabuses was just 10.5 percent, so the use of e-books has doubled in two years.

“E-journal articles are more frequently used, but e-books are still finding their place in the academic world,” says Kai Halttunen, University Researcher at the School of Education at the University of Tampere.

Halttunen is a specialist in questions of information retrieval and he works in the Campus Conexus project.


E-books require practice

According to Halttunen, getting a tablet computer or an e-reader seems to be the first step to start people reading e-books.

The drawback of e-readers is that the technical uploading of a book can seem like hard work at first.

“Users must create different kinds of user accounts and upload programmes before getting their first e-books. There are several e-book services,” Halttunen says.

“It takes practice to build an environment where you can use the e-books. Even e-books are not always available, even if you might think that they are. The different e-book services have different terms of use, for example for how many people can read the book simultaneously.”

However, Halttunen has rarely encountered a situation where an e-book has not been available. Many services have so many reader rights that problems will never occur.


Only a few Finnish books

The statistic compiled by the Tampere University Library shows that there are less Finnish e-books than there are e-books in English.

According to Halttunen, Finnish publishers are uninformed and they nearly panic about what to do with e-books. They are unsure of how they should perceive the future development in the field.

The varied conditions the service providers have and the diverse availability of e-books makes for quite puzzled readers who are not very familiar with the world of e-books.

“Compared with the traditional printed book, e-books have a lot more variation.”


Quick browsing

Kai Halttunen thinks that an e-book is a great help in teaching. It creates new opportunities to study literature.

“E-book services could be used e.g. as a giant database to show what has been said about a certain topic in different sources. Also if there are several books from the same author, you can see how the author has developed the use of a certain concept.”

You can browse the contents of e-books quickly.

“In some services you can add your own comments in the text. Students could perhaps study an e-book together and write their remarks so that they are visible to the other students in the group,” Halttunen thinks.

The world of scientific publications is unfamiliar to new students. The students may search Google Books for sources, but there the books are always incomplete and miss an arbitrary part. The students can borrow whole books from an e-book service if they only know where to look.

According to Halttunen, students should be taught information retrieval right from the start of their studies. If they had thoughtfully designed assignments, the students would learn to retrieve information and get to know the electronic databases at the same time.

“However, if they are given too wide assignments they will encounter problems and become frustrated. If the assignments are too narrow and predetermined, the students will learn the things that are taught, but they will not learn anything new about information retrieval.”


Text Tiina Lankinen
Photograph Jonne Renvall
Translation Laura Tohka

This story was originally published in Finnish in Aikalainen 5/2013