Remember back when we as a profession pretty much lost it over the decision by HarperCollins to have ebooks expire after 26 loans? Ah, we were so young, so naive. If we had any clue about the limitations yet to come, we would have been a lot more welcoming of what now seems like not such a bad deal.
Brain Hive is creating buzz, and a bit of controversy, with a new business model for delivering ebooks to school libraries. The site claims that its $1-a-read rental strategy will “add thousands of titles to your collection.” Can it deliver? At first glance, I was quite skeptical: $1 a read seems rather high.
This post was written by Bob Wolven, cochair of the ALA Digital Content and Libraries Working Group. and associate university librarian for bibliographic services and collection development for Columbia University.
This morning, I had to make a call to the Amazon Kindle Business and Education team to get our Kindles added to our new Whispercast account. While on the phone, the representative did say that Whispercast could be used to deliver content through a school library.
Yesterday, Amazon announced a new service designed to help schools and businesses deploy Kindles for wider use. Dubbed Whispercast (after the similiarly named Kindle network called Whispernet) the service provides support for deployment of management profiles, distribution of content, and management of devices. But will it work for libraries?
The American Library Association has launched a website, Ebooks and Digital Content, that provides links to resources on all aspects of e-content in libraries.
