Daily Thoughts 10/23/2013

Still Life With a Book, 1883, Paul Signac Daily Thoughts 10/23/2013

This morning, I checked the library Facebook and Twitter. I also spent a little time looking at the different New York Times Bestseller Lists.

http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/2013-10-27/overview.html

I think our joining the Overdrive Advantage program has increased the amount of e-books which people are taking out. We have ordered for children's, teen, and adult. http://westchester.lib.overdrive.com/0DEA839A-A262-4EB7-918D-B4358F1D4AC1/10/50/en/ODAdvantage.htm

Also, the new person for the computer lab has been working out well. He has been working on getting our events into the local online papers. http://pelham.patch.com/groups/events/p/friends-of-the-mt-vernon-public-library-book--bake-sale

This afternoon, I watched the ALA Virtual Town Hall on E-books from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. I got to hear different speakers talk about library issues with e-books. The first is that e-books are much more expensive than regular books. The big six publishers are charging more. However, 82% of our regular users want them. There was quite a bit on outreach. Some of the sites mentioned were Digital Book World and Authors for Library E-books which is currently supported by Jodi Picoult and Cory Doctorow.

I thought the most interesting part was towards the end where they mentioned that libraries do not have a way to take donated e-books. This is a very interesting idea. I think it will cause major changes with groups like The Friends of the Library and other local authors. In fact, it is difficult for libraries to handle small publishers who have e-books for sale. This is an important issue. It brings in the issue of locally produced material in e-book form for local history and local authors. I have seen many local authors have e-books in addition to their print copies.

This reminded me of an earlier statement that the whole publisher and reader ecosystem is changing. These changes are very new and leave open issues like how you archive or preserve e-books for the longer term.

I enjoyed listening to the presentation. It is very relevant to what is happening in our library right now.

Web Bits

Young People Are Not As Digitally Native As You Think

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/young-people-are-not-as-digitally-native-as-you-think/?_r=0