E-books are proving themselves as an established format at the Royal
Roads University (RRU) Library. Established in 1995 following the closure of
Royal Roads Military College and with a mandate to grant applied professional
graduate and undergraduate degrees, the relatively small monographic
collection consists of approximately 52% printed books and 48% e-books.
The growth of the e-book collection is a result of efforts to aggressively
collect networked information resources in order to support a unique educational
model, where at any given time approximately 80% of students—and
a considerable number of teaching faculty—work at a distance. RRU does
not operate according to a traditional academic calendar: programs begin in
every month of the year, with particularly high intake levels in the summer.
The distance learning model allows students to gain credentials while working
because most programs have a limited on-campus residency of two or
three weeks, two or three times during their program. Most of the undergraduate
students, however, attend classes fulltime and in-person during a
single, full calendar year when they complete third and fourth year studies
in a compressed timeline.