We started investigating ebooks last year, first acquiring
Follettshelf. It was ok, a bit clunky on the laptop with Follett Digital Reader, and I am disappointed that so many of the secondary fiction titles are available only in the USA and Canada. The non-fiction is great though, especially for IB. This year we signed up with
Wheelers who offer a great range of fiction.
After a soft launch, I found our ebooks were not being well-used. One of the problems, I think, was the lack of ipad apps. Who wants to read on a laptop? This has now changed, with both eplatforms providing good ipad apps -
Bluefire reader for Wheelers and
Follett Enlight K-12 app for Follett.
As we all move forward with our ebook provision in school libraries, the challenge is to maximise use for the budget outlay.
A meeting with our Elementary Literacy Co-ordinator was further motivation to review what ebooks we were providing across the school, and to vigorously promote them. Add to this the recent announcement that our school is moving to 1-1 ipads in Elementary next year and our Platform for secondary laptops will change to Apple - Macbooks.
Our two shelves have been differentiated in this way - Wheelers: fiction for the whole family; Follett - specialising in Fiction and Non-Fiction for Secondary. As well as promoting reading on mobile devices, I am still promoting Follettshelf on laptop with
Adobe Digital Editions. This is because a few of our students do not have access to a mobile device at home, and I imagine it might be acceptable for students when they are working on their laptops to access our non-fiction, course-related content that way too.
We have re-subscribed to
Tumblebooks, and have
BookFlix, as good ebooks for Elementary. There is a new provider emerging from Australia -
Story Box Library with free trials available until April 2014.
Online help has been created on our library website for use of the ebook shelves on both laptop and ipad.
http://libguides.ais.com.sg/ebooks
As we are approaching the end of year and Christmas break, we are visiting English classes promoting our ebooks to students. I have published a newsletter article promoting our ebooks to families for holiday reading and shared information on the homepage of our VLE as well.
Postscript:
I have just visited two Year 10 classrooms this morning, promoting our ebookshelves and online help.
I want to share two lovely emails I received from students afterwards:
"I would
like to thank you for introducing eBook to our class.
I think it’s a really useful tool. It will definitely help me to borrow books
form the library with more comforts. I actually
have iPad mini and I’ve always wanted to use it to read books electronically.
Could you please show me how to do it before the holiday starts?"
and
"I was wondering if you could purchase some
titles from the black library, some that i would love to be added are the
Horrus heresy series, The Fall of Damnos and Fateweaver. Thank you for introducing this new service, I
can't wait to start using it."
Made my day!
And
Yesterday 5 ebooks were borrowed - a good start!
