Library System: Allegany County Library Systems
Learning Event website: http://digipalooza.com/
Top 3 things learned:1. Libraries must realize "books are not the product. Reading is the product." (Andrew Richard
Albanese - Publishers Weekly.) This was a major theme for the event. Libraries should support and encourage reading. eBooks are not a challenge to our traditional services. Rather, they are a tool for
promoting those services by making reading convenient and accessible for some audiences.
2. eBooks offer libraries the chance to reach new audiences, like professional men ages 30-60. Libraries have to challenge themselves to develop promotional tools to reach this audience. One library used "Digital Bookshelf" posters in prominent public spaces. Another created digital library cards that could be signed up for online. (Verification of address, etc. was achieved by mailing a registration number to the patron's home address. The patron has to return the number to the library via e-mail to keep the account from expiring.) In various ways, library staff worked to curate and promote their eBook and eAudiobooks just as they would their print materials, not as a collection itself but as specific items in their collection.
3. OverDrive will be launch a new web interface this fall that will be cleaner and nicer, but more importantly, it will have behind-the-scenes features that make browsing and searching much, much faster. How to implement: Library staff can not think of eBooks and other digital content as "technology" that can be relegated to staff members who identify or have been identified as the techies at their branch or in their system. eBooks and eAudiobooks are BOOKS. The technology is getting easier and isn't really the focus anymore. The content is the focus now. Print books,
eBooks, apps, browsers, etc. are merely the delivery tools for the content. Staff need to remember to offer customer service by staying abreast of what's available, what a particular patron's reading interests are, and how patron can get desired material in the format that's best and most convenient for them. We need to encourage library staff to see electronic content in this way.
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