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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 [...]

Rosen spent much of Spring and Summer updating their award winning Teen Health & Wellness resource with an abundance of new features.  The first interface was already a great one, so I’m glad to see even more features added. Here’s a summary of what’s NEW with Teen Health & Wellness for Fall 2010: Instant translation [...]

I had a great time testing out the new Rosen Online Publishing interface, Rosen Learning Center.  This center currently features 12 titles that spotlight Texas.  History, government, land, resources, and missions are just a few of the topics covered in the 12 titles, which are designed for 3rd grade reading levels.  The books meet the [...]

Great news for libraries using OverDrive.  They now offer (in beta) the ability to download public domain, EPub titles from Project Gutenberg to a library’s virtual branch.  These titles don’t require authentication and have no hold lists or check out periods.  Boston Public Library was the first to implement the Project Gutenberg titles, adding 15,000 [...]

ebrary announced today the addition of 800 titles to Public Library Complete from publishers such as:  ANACOM, Chelsea House, Ballantine, Bantam and Global Media.  400 of the titles are fiction.  The addition of these titles takes the collection to over 21,000 multiuser access titles.  The multiuser, subscription based collection includes free access for public high [...]

Big news today from Credo Reference, US Public libraries can now provide local public high schools with free access to Credo General Reference.  The pilot program will include local public high schools in new US public library subscriptions at no additional cost! (bold inserted by sp) From the press release:  Recognizing the increasing burden on [...]

Each year at the ALA Annual Conference, Booklist’s Reference Books Bulletin sponsors a program to discuss various topics related to reference and reference publishing.  This year RBB’s session focused on the process of creating a reference work, from idea to reality.  The speakers included Casper Grathwohl from Oxford University Press, Rolf Janke from SAGE Reference, [...]

OverDrive has signed a preliminary agreement with Disney Digital Books (www.disneydigitalbooks.com) that will enable libraries to offer access to Disney’s comprehensive library of books online. Young library patrons and their parents will be able to enjoy-for the first time-unlimited access to over 600 new and classic Disney books for kids of all ages with just [...]

I learned about the JISC eBook comparison chart at the ALA conference this week. It is available on the JISC site at http://www.jisc-adat.com/adat/adat_ebooks.pl and offers a comparison of up to 7 different eBook platforms including:  Credo Reference, NetLibrary, ebrary, EBL, MyiLibrary, Dawsonera, and Taylor and Francis eBookstore.  Over 50 functional features are compared with basic Y/N [...]

On my way to work this morning, an article on the front page of a fellow Chicago Transit Authority rider’s Wall Street Journal caught my attention. The article is part of WSJ’s Future of the Book series, and explores how e-books will change bookselling. Of course, e-books are changing libraries too, and are also having [...]

Last December Gale release an iPhone app for the public library market based on their AccessMyLibrary service.  They are now releasing this same iPhone app for the school library market called, AccessMyLibrary School Edition.   The new K-12 version allows students to find their local school library – (grade schools, middle schools and high schools) and [...]

With the growth of e-materials, or digital-native materials, do you find the amount of printing rising?  I have seen more emphasis put on the purchasing and subscribing to electronic databases and ebooks that have similar materials also available (or potentially available) in print.  When I see the number of pages being printed from the electronic [...]

When performing collection development, or teaching a lesson, or anything in-between, do you aim for the highest performing patron, the lowest performing patron, or somewhere in between?  For example, do you only purchase those items that suit the needs of the lowest reading level, forcing others to go ‘down’ or do you purchase only those [...]

SAGE Reference Online will have free access until May 15th of this year.  Users must complete a quick registration page, but after that will have access to over 50 subject specific encyclopedias and over 180 handbooks, all in the social sciences.  Access includes The Encyclopedia of Journalism, which received Honorable Mention for the Dartmouth Award [...]

Britannica announced the release of an iPhone and iTouch app for the Concise Encyclopedia 2010.  The app is available for download in the iTunes store for $24.95 and includes over 25,000 articles and 800 images and maps.  Search, search history, and “on this day” features help to navigate the content quickly.  The app takes minimal [...]

Credo Reference subscribers will soon have access to over 10,000 topic pages, designed to provide a subject orientation and context for students doing research.  The pages include definitions, encyclopedia entries, images, and much more from the Credo collection.  These should prove to be a great starting point for research on a variety of topics – [...]

Gale/Cengage and ABC-CLIO announced this week that 250 ABC-CLIO titles are available in the GVRL interface.  The 250 titles cover history, humanities and general interest topics and include the Greenwood, Praeger, and Libraries Unlimited imprints as well.  For more information please visit Gale’s Re:Sources blog.

OCLC announced yesterday the sale of NetLibrary to EBSCO.  According to the press release, EBSCO will acquire the eBooks and eAudiobook collections from NetLibrary.  The content will remain available on the NetLibrary platform, but EBSCO also plans to offer it on the popular EBSCOHost platform.  Several FirstSearch databases were also licensed to EBSCO in the [...]

With the rising availability of ebooks, and potentially etextbooks, how do we as libraries help our patrons to access these books?  The rising costs of textbooks makes education less accessible than before to students.  Yet, having textbooks on reserve causes problems – staffing, processing, replacing, checking for damage or missing pages.  eTextbooks would be a [...]

Libraries who subscribe to OverDrive will be happy to hear about the release of an audiobook app for Blackberry smartphones.  The app was released to the public in beta format and can be downloaded at: http://www.overdrive.com/software/omc.  The app allows users to wirelessly download mp3 audio book files from libraries and three online retailers.  OverDrive is [...]