Professional paper
E-books and e-book readers as a new library service : experiences and perspectives
Marina Lončar
Abstract
In the past years the growing popularity of e-books prompted by the rapid development of a diversity of e-book readers has resulted in the enormous increase in the consumer purchasing of e-readers and the corresponding increase in commercial availability of dowloadable e-books. As the publishing industry is facing great changes in the digital environment, and e-books sales are on the constant rise, libraries are challenged to introduce e-books in their services and to find the way to respond to today’s and tomorrow’s technology. The presence of e-books has been the most prominent in the USA, where librarians try to cope with the changes by offering different business models. In the year 2011, the American Corner of the “Bogdan Ogrizović” City Library (The Zagreb City Libraries) launched a pilot project entitled Introducing free electronic books on the e-book reader Kindle in the library services of the American Corner Zagreb. E-books and e-book readers have not yet been introduced into Croatian public libraries, so the goals of the project are to establish how to implement new technology into a Croatian library and to involve users in the project through interactive workshops and through a voluntary program. The paper presents the library experience in the development of a free e-book collection for the e-book reader Kindle DX based on the Project Gutenberg’s philosophy and selection, and the access to free content from renowned American magazines and papers available for downloading. The starting points for the development of a digital collection include: e-book formats and e-book standards for e-readers, ebook platforms for creating and accessing e-book content. The paper also presents the analysis of the survey carried out in the workshops during the project implementation. The experience gained in this pilot project, which involved the library introduction of e-books on e-readers, will provide the basis for introducing new devices, new media and new services as well as the guidance while taking challenges to introduce commercial e-books and e-book lending.
Keywords
public library; electronic book; e-book; e-reader Kindle; Project Gutenberg; free e-book; e-book collection development; library services; American Corner Zagreb of the Bogdan Ogrizović Library
Hrčak ID:
115197
URI
Publication date:
3.9.2013.
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