Legal Research

eBooks in Libraries ? A GOOD THING

By admin

With apologies to Martha Stewart – it’s a good thing.

Two data bits that are awesome and should help us to get better with the idea of e-books in libraries:

NUMBER ONE

66% of Public Libraries in US offering eBooks

The Public Library Funding and Technology Access Study from ALA?s Office for Research and Statistics just released their 2009-10 statistics. Included in this report was U.S. public libraries providing access to ebooks ? which was 65.9%

A sampling of the % of Libraries Providing E-Books In:

Florida?86.9%
Hawaii?100%
Illinois?46%
New York?71%
Ohio?83%
Oregon?70.8%
Washington?48.6
Note: Since e-books are listed in the Internet category we?re assuming these are books downloaded off the Internet from services like OverDrive, Safari, NetLibrary, Books 24×7, ebrary, and others. We?re trying to find out how these numbers and ones to come will count books downloaded once to a Kindle, iPad, nook, or other device and then loaned to many users.

Thanks to Resource Shelf for this information.

NUMBER TWO:

From Teleread:

“60,000 library cards issued by Vancouver library due to ebooks
By Paul Biba

According to the Vancouver Sun the Vancouver Public Library is riding a wave of new memberships, and this is due, at least in part, to ebooks.

The library has seen 60K new memberships in 2008 ? 2009, up from 42,000 the previous year. The library attributes the increase to the new popularity of ebooks.

?It?s one of our fastest-growing branches ? the virtual library,? Kavanagh said, adding that the library?s website usage is up 20 per cent for 2010. ?The e-books in particular, we think have really made a difference.? ? Deb Hutchison Koep, deputy director of the West Vancouver library, said Stephenie Meyer?s Breaking Dawn (the latest in the Twilight series) has five e-book copies with eight holds, but of the seven print copies at the library, two are on the shelf.

The library uses PDFs and Epubs. Lots more information in the article.”

Sooooo, e-books can be an awesome way to drive people to the library – erh – the library website. And I know the same applies to audiobooks – for commuters in particular.

Time for a great marketing campaign.

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on August 18, 2010 (boomark / email).