Adventures with E-books, Part 2: The Positives

After several research projects this year (as you can see from our LibGuides), I am in a much better place to review the e-book platforms we have chosen to play with this year. I am reviewing them from the perspective of the upper school (9th-12th grade) that is in its first year of 1:1 iPads.

The Gale Virtual Reference Library is still a favorite for specialized encyclopedias. E-book reference is really the way to go, and if your reference collection isn't migrating online, it really should be. We also have some ABC CLIO ebooks and I am thinking of adding more, since their databases are also quite popular for introductory research at our school. Our upper schoolers now use the GVRL via the easy to use Gale iPad app, Access My Library. The students download articles as PDF's and highlight and annotate using PDF Expert. GVRL is also popular because the students can copy and paste the citations into NoodleTools.

Ebrary has  really caught on with our upper schoolers because of the scholarly content and fabulous keyword searching. Once the students see how they can use a massive library instantly (78,000 books and growing!), with easy bookmarking,  downloading, highlighting, keyword searching, and an iPad app to read the books offline, they are very happy. The teachers are impressed by the ease of access to quality information. [Update to my previous post, the copying and pasting from the app works beautifully into Evernote and the NoodleTools notecards.] The students also seem happy with the idea of reading the books offline via the app, but I don't know how many have done so. I have to review my ebrary usage statistics - but who has time? I know they are using it - I see them in the library. I will look it over when research season is over. Currently the 10th and 11th graders are using it, and the seniors are about to start.

A couple of students have found e-books in ebrary that we actually cannot access.  I would like to try the Paton Driven Acquisition process soon. Although not officially on my selection policy, I try to buy most of what my community recommends - that day. Sometimes they are even delivered the following day (thank you, Amazon). Those books will at least get used! I'd like to do the same with nonfiction e-books, so that will be my next thing to learn with ebrary, the award winning product that is becoming a favorite (even after all my complaints on the previous post).

Axis 360 hasn't caught on quite as much, because  our kids really enjoy reading in print, as many Americans do. I think that if more popular titles were available, it would be more consistent and students would use it more. Also, since I am not using it for anything curricular, the students are not really forced to learn how to use it. I am saving it mostly for pleasure reading, and some students and faculty are enjoying it, but I'd like a larger affordable selection.

Stay tuned for more of our adventures with e-books, and let me know about your adventures!

Adventures with ebooks, Part One

Maybe I should call this post Misadventures with e-books.. or If I think ebooks are Confusing, What about my Students?

Baker and Taylor's Axis360 ebook Magic Wall needs the Blio reader. That is quite a sentence. They have an OK selection of books (although some are triple the cost of others, and I'm not buying those), and the books appear in the Magic Wall within a day. Customer service is really helpful, and the Magic Wall is pretty, especially on the iPad. Blio is a great reader. And, the platform's price is very reasonable.

However,

• E-books for libraries are just more expensive than the alternative.
• Explaining how to access the ebooks is a chore (we are making a LibGuide and a blogpost about it).
• The Axis 360 MARC records don't work well in our ILS, Destiny! We have to manipulate each record individually so Destiny will show that 1/1 books are in (which will be wrong if something gets checked out, but it is better than it always saying 0/0 are in), and we change the link in the MARC record, so it actually states that you click on the link to get to the Magic Wall to download the book, instead of just being a wild looking URL. Lots of work.

So, why not get the Follett e-books, you might ask. They work seamlessly with Destiny, and the circulation status is very clear. Well, Follett takes  several days to deliver the books and the page turning is painfully slow. S-L-O-W. At least it is slow on our iPads at school. I will keep trying to see if the reader gets better.

Ebrary is a whole other can of worms. On the computer it isn't too confusing, and you can make a bookshelf for your books. You need the bookshelf login to use the app. But then the bookshelf doesn't show up on the app. In fact, the bookshelf has nothing to do with the app. You use the app to search and download from the catalog only on to the iPad. Notetaking on the iPad is essentially cutting and pasting, and then the note has the citation attached, yes, but ittakesoutallthespacessoitishardtoreadwhatwascopiedandpasted.Thequotationslooklikethis. What is the deal with that?
On the computer the notetaking is good, and you can email pdfs to yourself to read on the iPad offline, among other features. But why the 2 products with the same name don't talk to each other is a mystery and a drawback.

Have you found that your patrons like the e-book  options at your library?

Stay tuned for more on our journey, hopefully some improvements in the market, and maybe some feedback from users. I haven't yet rolled these sources out to big groups of users. I am enjoying the experimenting and investigating, and I think this year of playing will turn up interesting results.