Library eBook Follies

E-books in libraries and the patron experience.

Since late 2011, we've been hard at work integrating the various e-book vendors into the patron web catalog. One-stop to find titles (digital or not) and to manage one's checked out titles and holds (digital or not). Nice and easy, right?

But after we've worked to integrate multiple e-content vendors into one catalog (thanks to the collaborative efforts of the teams at OverDrive, 3M Cloud and NYPL), we can see that, integrating the access, download, and account management is just a first step to a truly unified experience for patrons. And it's still not good enough—despite everyone's best efforts. So we've been doing some re-thinking.

As a bit of context, we developed this video. We think there is a better way, and we look forward to working with other vendors, libraries, and publishers to make it happen. Stay tuned...

• Category

  Education

[axciom]

Oh publishers...why do you shoot yourselves in the foot so hard and often...

[bibliocommons]

We appreciate the comments! Keep 'em coming. One note of clarification (just in case we were a little clumsy in our stick-figure-theatre), it's not really a publisher problem or an e-content vendor problem, but rather a problem of the system as a whole, and we think a new vision and a more elegant solution is needed--for the betterment of libraries, publishers, and readers everywhere. More to come!

[KokaKohla]

Wow..nice work Bibliocommons. Can't wait!!!

[bibliocommons]

We are pretty excited too!

[Wendy Hicks]

Oh, please, Library goddesses, let this be true!!!! Glad to be with a Bibliocommons library!!!

[bibliocommons]

We are glad to have PCIN on board :-)

[Jagtesh Chadha]

This is wonderful! eBooks are meant to be easy to use. Unfortunately that hadn't been the case. Until now!