Students’ Reading Preferences: An Exploratory Study

The e-book reader revolution is already here. The questions we asked ourselves were: What are the reading preferences of Information Science students of the second decade of the 21st century? How do different variables, such as relative advantage, comprehension, and learning strategies, affect students’ reading preferences? The research was conducted in Israel during the first semester of the 2015 academic year and encompassed 177 LIS students in an Information Science Department in Israel.

Three questionnaires were used: personal details, relative advantage, and learning strategies, and two further questions that focused on reading habits. The study showed students’ preferences for printed materials. In addition, it emphasizes the importance of two personal variables that may affect students’ will to read electronic materials: relative advantage and comprehension.

Professor Noa Aharony received her PhD in 2003 from the School of Education at Bar-Ilan University (Israel). She is the head of the Information Science Department at Bar-Ilan University (Israel). Her research interests are in education for library and information science, information literacy, technological innovations and the LIS community, and Web 2.0. Aharony is a member of the editorial boards of Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, and Online Information Review. She has published in refereed LIS and education journals.