E-books and Libraries

I just returned from the Saskatchewan Library Association's annual conference, where I convened two sessions on e-books for the library community. One session was delivered by Laura Adlam of LTDbooks and the other was given by Cate McNeely from the Richmond Public Library in British Columbia. At least three quarters of the librarians attending the conference also attended the two sessions on e-books, making it the most popular session of the conference. That goes to show how interested librarians are in this new technology.

Laura Adlam explained the different formats and how e-books are created and delivered. She also brought along several different reading devices, which everyone wanted to try after her presentation. She also distributed Jamie Engle's "Reader's E-Book Primer" to all the attendees. The librarians were very accepting of the new technology but the different formats and readers still lead to confusion. This is going to be the biggest roadblock in getting this technology accepted by the general public. For more information on LTDBooks visit http://www.ltdbooks.com .

Cate McNeely, runs the Richmond Public Library in British Columbia. She is the Deputy Chief Librarian. Cate is a neophile and the libraries of Richmond, BC show it. The Richmond, BC library, as I announced in an earlier column, was the first in Canada to circulate e-book readers, loaded with books. The experiment has been so successful (each reader has at least a six week waiting list on it) that the Richmond Library hopes to buy a dozen more in the next year. Richmond Public Library uses the old SoftBook reader but will be buying the new Rocket Readers in the future because of the costs. Richmond Public Library will be subscribing to NetLibrary in the next month to supplement its electronic books for patrons.

If you want to find out more about how this library handles Electronic Books go to http://rpl.richmond.bc.ca/rplinfo/ebooks... .

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