Utah Libraries » Colleen Eggett

Digital Book Index: pure delight

Colleen Eggett — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:01:55 +0000

Today I practically stumbled upon something so massive it’s amazing I didn’t bump into it earlier. The Digital Book Index is a meta-indexing project that provides links to over 165,000 full-text digital books, the vast majority of them free, though some come with a fee.

Some of their key topics are:

Arts:   Art & graphic arts, architecture, dance, decorative arts, costume, theatre & drama, music, photography, film & video
Children’s Books:   Contemporary & classic children’s books and stories
History:   American, English, Irish, European, Asian, African, local and regional histories
Law:   US Constitutional history, state constitutions, treaties, state statues & laws, legal ethics rules, copyright, and consumer information.
Literature:   Ranging from Chaucer & other medieval texts to modern, contemporary fiction
Math & Sciences:   Mathematics, astronomy, biology, botany & zoology, genetics, chemistry, physics, engineering, electronics, & computer science
Medicine & Health:   For professionals and patients including anatomy, radiology, infectious diseases, surgery, oncology, dentistry, and more
Philosophy and Religion:   Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, Taoism, etc.
Reference: Dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauri, style guides, etc.
Social Sciences: Anthropology, sociology, Psychology, Folklore, Mythology, Economics, Politics

It searches more than 1800 publishers, universities, and private sites including:

Boston Public Library
Chicago Historical Society
Cornell University
Duke University Library
Google
Gutenberg Project
Harvard University Library
Internet Archive
Library of Congress
National Library of Canada
NetLibrary (OCLC)
New York Public Library
U.S. National Park Service
University of Utah
Wiley Interscience
Yale University

And…

Approximately 200 University Presses
Several hundred commercial publishers including Bantam Books, MacMillan, Random House, and Simon & Schuster

Yea, this is digital reading at its finest hour. Pick up your Nook, your Kindle, your iPad, or all three, and enjoy.

Kindle and OverDrive

Colleen Eggett — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:50:48 +0000

People have been asking for instructions on using a kindle to check out eBooks from their public library through OverDrive, courtesy of Pioneer: Utah’s Online Library. Well, here you go.

Instructions:

Visit your Utah public library’s website and click on the link to Overdrive. Or, go to http://pioneer.utah.gov and click on OverDrive.
Check out a Kindle book (library card required).
Click on “Get for Kindle.” You will then be directed to Amazon.com to redeem your public library loan. You may be required to login to your Amazon.com account — or create a new account — if you’re not already logged in.
Choose to read the book on your Kindle device, free reading app, or Kindle Cloud Reader.

Note: Public library books require an active Wi-Fi connection for wireless delivery to a Kindle device. Library books will not be delivered via your Kindle’s 3G connection. If trying to send to a Kindle device and do not have an active Wi-Fi connection, you may instead choose to load your library book via USB. Both Mac and Windows users can manage Kindle content through a USB connection.

Springville Library Open House

Colleen Eggett — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:24:52 +0000

I went to the Springville Public library open house last Friday night. Pam Vaughn, the Library Director, spoke, as did the mayor. There was a live band, the highlight of the evening for me. People were able to mingle, tour the new building, and celebrate the day. There is a stream running on one side of the property and from upstairs, one can look down and see the stream and the trees. Some of the highlights of the building:

The entry is breathtaking
Lots of vibrant colors throughout
Computer area with large screens
Colorful children’s area with huge mobiles overhead
Comfortable space for storytime/ events
Teen area with lots of books and resources, right by the computer area
Huge reception area upstairs, with room to grow for the library
Very comfortable and cool staff area

My biggest takeaway: This is a beautiful library that will be an important community asset for many years to come. It shows that Springville City is committed to an informed, educated citizenry.

Placemaking at your library

Colleen Eggett — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 23:04:49 +0000

The Utah State Library sponsored the most useful, most fun class in September, at both the Provo Library and the State Library. Traci Lesneski of Meyer, Scherer, and Rockcastle Ltd. came and presented on “Placemaking at your Library.” She was so great! She has tons of insight into what makes the interior of libraries more patron friendly. Here are the slides she presented.

Here’s what she talked about:

Changing expectations of library users and its impact on library design
Principles of Placemaking and how it relates to a library user’s experience
10 Steps to a better library interior
Recent library projects and what people are doing now

Attendees brought photos and floor plans of their libraries to re-design their own library spaces. They came away with ideas for what to do. I even came up with a way to redesign our library space here!

Some of the things that really made me think:

There has been a decrease in print materials per person in the community in the past few years
There has been an even steeper decrease in reference materials
Audio and video materials are on the rise, and e-books are skyrocketing
The public can’t get enough computers or technology

The shift is from:

Housing resources –> connecting to resources

Print centric –> user centric

Solitary –> solitary/collaborative (some solitary space is still needed, but so is collaborative space)

Mono-task –> multitask

Introverted –> extroverted

Fixed –> adaptable

And, finally, I really liked her 10 steps (make that 12 ??)

My very best takeaway seems to be: embrace color.

Thanks, Traci Lesneski, for the enlightening discussion. See you soon, I hope!

Colleen

A web presence for every library

Colleen Eggett — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 20:44:45 +0000

Did you hear? OCLC’s Innovation Lab is going to start a new project: a web presence for every library. They will focus on the small libraries in America. It’s pretty exciting and offers some real possibilities to stand-alone’s that want to get a site!

Cloud eBook Reading

Colleen Eggett — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 20:18:38 +0000

[Here's my response to my 12/29/10 OverDrive post]

We’ve all heard of cloud computing (googledocs), cloud social networking (facebook), and here comes the next big thing: cloud eBook reading. That’s where your eBook is held in the cloud and you can bookmark your place and come back to it no matter which handheld or computer you’re using.

The big advantage is that you don’t have to download an app or a piece of software or have a dedicated e-reading device.

Joseph Pearson of Inventive Lab wrote, “The one single platform we expect future e-reading devices to have in common is the web browser. If you want to give your readership the freedom to own (forever) the books they buy from you, the web is where it will happen.”

Here are some cloud eBook readers that may be worthy of your time, Dear Reader.

Ibis Reader Lets you download all off your books. Lots of free public access titles available on the site or get them from somewhere else and put them on Ibis Reader. Reads DRM-free books in the ePub format. A clean interface that’s easy to use and my personal favorite.

Google Books You can use just about any device you own to read any book, anywhere. Download for free multitudes of books in the public domain or buy copyrighted books through vendors set up with Google. Read online or download to your device and read offline. There’s just so much here.

Booki.sh works on Macs, PCs, iPhones, iPads, the Kindle3, the latest Blackberry phones, and any other device with a modern web browser. There’s nothing to install. Readers can go from following a link on a webpage to buying a book to reading it in seconds. On most devices, you can read books whether you’re online or offline.

All run on html5, which some are calling the future of the internet. In 5 years maybe 3, let’s talk about whether that held true. This next generation html is showing up in newer websites and services. New features include media playback and interactivity and, most importantly for ebook reading, the ability to store offline data. I see html5 as an alternative to flash. Read more about html5 in this article by Terrence O’Brien, “What Is HTML5, and Why Should You Care?”

Here are some places to find free ebooks: http://www.teleread.com/free-ebooks/

And of course, the cloud’s silver lining is Pioneer: Utah’s Online Library, where you can find premium eBook titles through OverDrive. Not yet aboard the cloud, using the Adobe Digital Editions platform, they have great eBooks that I would otherwise have to pay for myself. Maybe one day OverDrive will jump on the cloud but not yet it seems.

OverDrive and the rest of the modern world as we know it

Colleen Eggett — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 00:24:04 +0000

Here I am. Using OverDrive with my new iPod which I got fairly recently. There are other sources of ebook and audiobooks as well such as NetLibrary (free from your public library in Utah), Google Books (older classics free, $ for newer titles), Kobo (free, $), Audible ($) , iTunes (some free, most $), Project Gutenberg (free, mostly ebooks), the list goes on. Right now I’m transferring War and Peace to my iPod hoping for the latter not the former.

There’s gotta be some way to get organized. I’m seeking nirvana: combining an iPad with a knockout interface where everything comes at me in one place, put into categories like shelves in a bookcase.

Something to dream of, plan for, investigate.