Thank you to everyone who replied. I've copied the replies I received
below. I still think it is a fantastic idea.
Christine Ciofolo
SLMS Intern
Palmer School, LIU University
Westchester, NY
ccwriter@optonline.net
My original post:
I am an LM intern in a middle school in metro NY. A conversation with my
site supervisor led me to do a little bit of research on audio e-books. I
am curious about the feasibility of this new technology in school libraries.
Does anyone have audio e-books in their collections? Do you circulate the
devices (MP3 Players)? Or just the digital info? Does anyone circulate
'print' e-books? I know that a number of public libraries (New York PL
being one) do allow patrons to remotely download e-books? Does anyone do
this in a middle school or HS library?
Thanks for your input.
Your replies:
Hi. We have ebooks that circulate, running on the internet, for one week.
Netlibrary is the company that we bought our ebooks from, and I like their
selections very much. We are thinking of purchasing audio-ebooks. I like the
ebooks, but it has been difficult to get the teachers to utilize them.
Therefore the students do not value them as they should.
I have a middle school library (6-8) and I have both ebooks and audio books.
The ebooks have not gone over that well and I wouldn't buy them again, but
we do have them and they are in the catalog. Audio books, on the other hand,
have gone over with a bang. We started with about 50 and now have almost
300. I buy mostly from Listening Library/Books on Tape and I do try to keep
current with new acquisitions frequently. I have also purchased about 25
cassette players with headphones. I got them at Walmart and only paid $5.00
each so that if they are lost or destroyed, then the student doesn't owe us
that much. For a case I bought 24 ct. CD holder with zipper and cut out the
little plastic sleeves. It works great. The kids love them and most of the
time there are none available. Yes, we have lost & destroyed one each but
that's ok. Comes with the territory of middle schoolers. Anyway, I would
definitely do that again. I did write a small grant from our PTA for some of
the tapes. Also, Random HOuse will replace lost/broken tape free. It's a
good deal.
I use ebooks in my elementary school. I have several collections from
isaveatree.com and they are being used in a variety of ways at my school.
They have free marc records that come with them, so they are listed in my
catalog. There is also a menu page that the teachers and students can select
a book from. Teachers can use them as instructional tools when they are
introducing a concept. Students can use them at the classroom computer, in
the media center or in the computer lab. Check out the website for
isaveatree.
I went to a presentation yesterday about a program called Kurzweill 3000.
It used a synthetic voice to "read" aloud text. It can be used with a
scanner for teacher's text or with ebooks. It really looked great for
special needs students, ESL, and students with learning disabilities. I'd
love to see how ebooks are being used in school libraries because it would
work with this program. Let me know what you hear from other people or post
a HIT.
I don't know if this will help or not, but a lot of public libraries have
subscriptions to ebooks. It would be senseless for schools to spend the
money if the public library has access for free. We are about to gain
access to over 27,000 ebooks through www.netlibrary.com. I have used these
before, and they are great for research purposes. I don't think there are
as good for reading for pleasure.
As for downloadable audio books, that is something that is also coming to
public libraries in Alabama, and yes, you will be able to download them to
your ipod. The price is a little steep ($6K per year) for my library right
now, but it is something I am definitely interested in in the future. This
is just another way of taking the library to the public when the public
can't/won't come to it.
Actually we are looking into purchasing ipod shuffles and using those for
audiobooks. We don't have an audiobook collection and I have been asked to
build one. The big decision is whether to go with CDs or ipods. As to
ebooks, we have five on our database site - could purchase more but I
haven't seen much use of them yet so I am holding off.
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