Fast Stats: Studies, Statistics and News You Can Use

• Although ebook textbooks have become widely available as part of course materials from most publishers, they have yet to catch on among faculty and students. Only 38 percent of faculty even made available downloadable ebook versions of physical textbooks, and only 4 percent of the students actually downloaded ebooks—this compared to 62 percent purchasing the physical book, 12 percent renting the physical book and 6 percent using/sharing library copies.

In a rare bit of good news for print, of a list of possible course components, 91 percent of polled instructors identified print textbooks as important for their specific courses. The next highest finishers: campus learning management systems like Blackboard (37 percent), e-textbooks (29 percent) and online quizzing (24 percent).

For more from the study, visit bisg.org/publications/product.php?p=25&c=437

—A.S.

Readers are readers are readers

In its April 2012 reading habits survey, Pew Research Center studied the reading habits of news/newspaper readers and magazine/journal readers. Pew found that tablet and e-reader owners are more likely than non-owners to do both types of reading. In addition, those who consider themselves "frequent" book readers are more likely than "infrequent" book readers to also read newspapers and magazines.

Those most likely to read news articles are male, white, over the age of 30, college educated, living in a household earning more than $50,000, and e-reader owners. Not surprisingly, e-reader owners are no more likely than non-owners to be reading magazines and journals. Although many magazines are faithfully reproduced on devices like the iPad and Kindle Fire, people seem slower to embrace digital magazines than they have newspapers and books.

For more from the study, visit libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/
04/04/the-rise-of-e-reading/

—A.S.

Why Analytics: Six thoughts on moving from data-rich to insight-rich

At his talk at the Book Industry Study Group's Making Information Pay conference at the McGraw Hill Auditorium, Kyle Marx, VP of Business Analytics at Readerlink Distribution Services, offered six key pointers on wringing good strategy from your data.