- Submitted by Jim Duncan, State Library
Despite growing frustration with the ebook pricing and availability policies of many publishers, U.S. libraries have continued to respond to growing demand from patrons by rapidly expanding their collections of ebooks, according to LJ and SLJs third annual “2012 Survey of Ebook Usage in U.S. Public Libraries” report, sponsored by Freading.
Read more at The Digital Shift
It’ll be interesting to see what it will take for more adoption in the schools. Access to devices is cited in the article. Of course, this is central. Lending the devices, themselves, would create an administrative challenge. Is there hard evidence about whether an individual ownership model (whether subsidized or not) would be easier to administer?
But I expect that even with adoption of devices there is also a need for an infrastructure that allows mass “lending” and “unlending” of resources from a central administrative role. iPad adoption is an example of there being potential for delivery of content, aps, etc. However it is not fiscally responsible to give away access to these aps to a personal Apple ID. Especially if you need the ability to reissue an ap or ebook (text) to the next incoming class of a similar grade.