Wednesday, April 20, 2011

E-Books and East Lansing Public Library.

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Lauren Douglass, the head of technology services at the East Lansing Public Library, said they started the e-book service in 2010 and people are checking out way more things now. They had 244 e-book checkouts last month.

According to Kristin Shelley, the director of the ELPL, they use Overdrive as their vendor for e-books.

She said they currently have 489 patrons registered to use e-book services, and 64 patrons are currently waiting for e-book/audio titles to download.

"Libraries have not made the shift to put more money into the materials for e-books," she said.

However, she said e-book popularity causes a change in philosophy for libraries and they are putting a significant amount of money into e-books in 2012.

"This is the trend," she said. "This is where books are going."

She said the library will support e-books and e-book readers as long as the publishers work well with libraries, and they haven't seen that yet.

Douglass said most of the people they work with that have e-readers are age 40 and up. She believes more adults and children will be drawn into e-readers when Harry Potter e-books come out.

She said East Lansing patrons can get titles faster than other patrons in the area with the services at the ELPL.

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