Book Lovers, Technophiles, Pragmatists, and Printers: The Social and Demographic Structure of User Attitudes toward e-Books

Andy Revelle is Social Sciences Librarian, Kevin Messner is Life Sciences Librarian, Aaron Shrimplin is Assistant Dean for Reference and Collection Services, and Susan Hurst is Business Librarian at Miami University; e-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]. © 2012 Andy Revelle, Kevin Messner, Aaron Shrimplin, and Susan Hurst, Attribution-NonCommercial (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) CC BY-NC Q-methodology was used to identify clusters of opinions about e-books at Miami University. The research identified four distinct opinion types among those investigated: Book Lovers, Technophiles, Pragmatists, and Printers. The initial Q-methodology study results were then used as a basis for a large-n survey of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty so that we could have a more complete picture of the demographic and social makeup of the campus population. Results from that survey indicate that academic discipline is strongly associated with the respondents’ opinion types. Gender and educational status are also associated with respondents’ opinion types.