The Pine Bluff-Jefferson County Library System will soon unveil its new eBook and eAudiobook service that will allow patrons to dowload titles straight to their portable eReaders, tablets or personal computers.
Library director Dave Burdick is excited about the program and its potential to improve the library experience for patrons.
“I would think that in the next week or two we will have this up and running and available,” Burdick said. “I’m excited about this. It is one of the last things that I’ll do here. I hoped to put together a critical mass of titles for the online collection and I think I’ve done that here. We have purchased a wide variety of items, including general fiction, mysteries, science fiction, Westerns, young adult titles and children’s titles.”
Burdick, who announced his retirement in early 2011, will be ending his regular duties at the end of March, but will remain available to the library board in an advisory capacity through September.
Burdick said that the library has so far purchased 613 titles, with 316 eBooks, 297 eAudiobooks, and another 672 titles of Walt Disney children’s eBooks.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
“This Walt Disney collection allows for an unlimited number of people to have the same item checked out at the same time, so these items will always be available to kids throughout the year,” Burdick said.
Burdick said that he has tried to order as many current titles as he could.
“The majority of the initial collection is titles released in 2010 and 2011,” he said.
Burdick said that once the service is operational, patrons will log into it through the library’s website at pbjclibrary.state.ar.us/.
“Ebooks can be checked out for up to 14 days and eAudiobooks for up to seven days,” Burdick said.
Burdick said that if a particular title is checked out no one else can check it out until it is returned, which is done automatically.
“Reservation lists can be formed for all titles which we own,” Burdick said. “An email notification will be sent allowing you time to download the title if you are next on the list. If you don’t have email then you can’t put anything on reserve. If you don’t pick up the title in time it will automatically move on to the next person on the reservation list.”
“This really makes the library available 24 hours a day every day of the year,” Burdick said. “Our staff will be available to help patrons learn how to download titles onto their devices.”
Burdick said that patrons who want to know if their electronic device will support the service should visit the vendor’s website at www.overdrive.com.
Burdick said that library patrons will need to use a PIN number to access the service.
“If patrons don’t already have a PIN number they can call the circulation desk or go online to get one,” Burdick said.
“The library had $30,000 budgeted in 2011 for the acquistion of titles for the eBook and eAudiobook program,” Burdick said. “This was about right because the library spent $25,000 last year on new titles for the program and we have spent another $2,000 so far out of the 2012 budget.”
“This has been on the drawing board for a good year,” Burdick said. “The Little Rock Public Library instituted a similar service a couple of years ago but down here who had a Kindle two years ago? Not very many people here even had a laptop. We installed wireless Internet access in the main library five or six years ago and in the branches one year ago. During the last couple of years we started seeing an increase in laptop use here at the central library as well as at our branches.”
“Many people have asked us over the past year when they will be able to download titles from the library,” Burdick said. “I probably had about a dozen people ask me personally when we would begin doing it. We had inquiries here at the main library as well as at our branches.”
“Our next step, once we determined that there were enough patrons interested in an eBook program, was to decide what type of a program we wanted,” Burdick said. “We decided to buy our eBooks and eAudiobooks through OverDrive, a company that services libraries around the country.”