Undergraduates Needed for Paid E-Book Study

The University of California Libraries are recruiting undergraduate participants for a paid focus group study on the future of e-books and digital lending within higher education.

If you are an undergraduate student in a higher education institution in the United States, and if you use e-books or e-book corpora for coursework or research purposes, we invite you to share your unique perspectives on your experiences with e-books as well as opportunities for improvement. 

You may have accessed e-books for research, instruction, or coursework from any of the following channels: (1) through memberships with public or university libraries on platforms such as OverDrive, Libby, Hoopla, HathiTrust, or JSTOR, (2) through purchasing e-books via Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Google Play Books, Kobo, etc., (3) through a subscription service, such as Audible, Scribd, BookLender, or Bookmate, (4) through websites that provide access to e-books for free, such as Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, Project Muse, ManyBooks, or others (whether authorized or not). 

To be included in the study, you must meet the following criteria: 

• are enrolled in a U.S.-based higher education institution as an undergraduate student (not as a library employee)
• have been using e-books (including digital journal articles) via one or more channels mentioned above for taking courses and/or conducting research regularly 
• are able to speak English
• are age 18 or older

Focus groups will take place online (via Zoom) and last approximately 1.5 hours. You will receive a $75 Amazon e-gift card for participating. If you are interested in participating, please complete the following Qualtrics questionnaire.

If you have any questions, please contact the lead researcher Lin Li at lin.li@uci.edu.

Please feel free to share this announcement with undergraduate students who may be interested in participating.