FAQs / OAQs

Frequently-Asked Questions / Occasionally-Asked Questions

What does Colorado’s ebook environment look like?
“Welcome to the world of constant change. Every week sees a new twist…” If you’re feeling dizzy, let Colorado’s eBook Manifesto help orient you.

What is Evoke?

A group of organizations spearheading, experimenting, learning and communicating. The central topic: Ebooks and their future in Colorado –> with an eye open to other forms of E-content (audio, video, other).

Who is part of Evoke?

Leaders, evangelists, thinkers and collaborators from:

Is this an exclusive group?
Tough question. Yes and no. Think of this as a task force, driven by practical purposes and local needs, but committed to openly sharing its work with other partners. Each of the organizations listed above has a stake in the future of Ebooks and other E-content. Some of these organizations are taking risks and experimenting while others are observing, documenting and communicating.

Practically speaking, we all have enormous amounts of work to do (either locally or collaboratively), and to be blunt, we can’t be bogged down with governance or carefully constructing the “perfect” committee.

But, if you consider the track record of those individuals participating, you know that each one is passionate about collaboration and thinks more broadly about the maelstrom of issues facing all of our libraries.

Feel like you have something SIGNIFICANT to add to the group? Contact us about your thoughts, or feel free to comment openly and directly on posts/articles you find on this site, or contact any individual listed here.

This all still feels kinda “general.” Does Evoke have a vision?

Yes, it’s a work in progress. Welcome to the world of perpetual alpha / beta. Some of us are flying on the edge.

Our Mission:
A statewide group that leverages the power of library cooperation to cost-effectively serve millions of library patrons with all types of e-content (purchased or locally-created).

Measures: If successful…

  • financial and operational relationships are well understood, financial models have been tested/explored and established, and sustainability is well understood
  • one of many tangible outcomes: negotiation power directly with publishers — clearly leveraging cooperative relationships among the state’s libraries
  • operational integrations are working effectively within and among libraries (quick examples: inter-library e-book collection development & management relationships, unified/standardized customer support efforts for e-books)
  • long-term & broad-scale, statewide service, including potential common technical standards/platform(s) for discovery and delivery of ebooks and other e-content
    • to be explored: what would libraries’ expectations look like?
    • to be explored: what do our project management steps entail?
    • to be explored: what are the long-term costs to deploy and maintain (statewide | per library)?