Our school has just signed with Overdrive to provide an e-book and audio-book download service for our students and staff. It is a service which will be fully integrated with our Library Management System Eclipse.net (hosted) from MicroLibrarian. As we are one of the first schools in the UK to start a digital download service I want to blog what happens (as it happens) to share the joys and pitfalls of the experience. This will be a “warts and all” account but one which I hope other schools will find helpful.

Many school librarians have spent the last couple of years lost in a “digital text” labyrinth trying to determine the best route through the e-book confusion which has been mostly created, in my opinion, by the publishing industry. (SHAME ON YOU BOOK PUBLISHERS) See my earlier post here. However today I am feeling very excited and optimistic. But it has been a daunting process so far. I first watched an hour long webinar from Overdrive in July 2011. There were only a few participants and most of these seemed to be ICT technicians from schools who knew little about the business of promoting reading for pleasure. I surmise someone from their SMT had said – can we get rid of print textbooks by getting digital versions and will this save us money? However that said, I was very impressed with the presentation and the patience of Jon From Overdrive who emailed me regularly over the next 6 months answering all my questions in great detail. During that time I was thinking and pondering about a number of issues which I will try to summarise here. I asked myself:

How do e-books fit into the purpose of our Library?
The main thrust of our “excellent” library (ISI Inspection Dec 2011) is to promote a reading culture in our school. Helping students develop digital information skills and complete assignments comes a very close second but reading for pleasure and enabling students to pursue independent interests (with passion) comes first. This is in line with our school ethos which aims for an education of the whole person. The Schools raison-d’etre for its library is very important when considering the kind of e-book service to provide. Subscribing to a collection of academic digital texts downloadable in pdf format for study purposes just doesn’t have the focus that we need. Hence the choice of Overdrive -a service that is mobile device friendly and is used by 70% of UK public libraries.

What will the future developments in digital formats be like?
Looking around at how other digital formats have developed over the years is very salutory. I remember Betamax video! Who could have foreseen the swift passing of tape for compact disc and now digital download? And what about propriety v open formats e.g iTunes v MP3 or Kindle v ePUb? What if we dramatically choose the wrong format? Or what if we choose the right format that isn’t quite good enough yet in providing a satisfying customer experience? Contemplating the current situation and understanding the trends is hard. My thoughts become quite obsessive when I think about this issue! Although some UK Library suppliers are now starting to provide e-book collections it seems to me that they do have not the depth of experience that Overdrive has in managing the complex digital rights imposed by publishers on the purchase to loan e-versions of their best sellers (SHAME ON YOU PUBLISHERS) On the other hand, Overdrive is very USA focussed- what if, in a years time say, the main UK players have established good relationships with UK publishers and have persuaded them to allow libraries to buy to loan a reasonable range of material?

Can I get an integrated service?
One of the other things that worries me about e-book download services is the fact that they are separate entities – downloadable from websites of either publishers or library suppliers. I like everything to be managed through the library catalogue where students can find and compare all resources regardless of format. Past experience has shown me that packages of resources all over the place just aren’t discoverable however hard I try. So imagine my delight when just after Christmas I got a email From Microlibraian saying they were launching a partnership with Overdrive at this years BETT show. All e-books and audio-books would be viewable in the Eclipse catalogue with a direct link through to the download page on an OverDrive website created for our school. Hooray -one of the problems sorted.

Will publishers EVER get it?
Listen up publishers – get your act together. Just because you can now control what libraries do with your books doesn’t mean you should. You are more dispensible than we are (see Amazon’s recent healthy self-publishing figures) In fact as bookshops have discovered over the last 20 years we can be great partners! We are busy creating the reading habit in your future customers. Did you hear that Penguin?

Despite these questions having unclear answers Kingswood school is taking the plunge. To be continued….