Weather keeping you indoors – download a book from the library
Jasper-Dubois County Contractual Library opened its virtual doors on hundreds of new books at around 10:00 a.m. on Jan. 17. Huntingburg Library has been offering e-books for about a year now and with the addition of the Jasper Contractual Library the entire county is able to download books and audiobooks from the Overdrive system.
Overdrive provides this service to over 15,000 libraries nationwide and the Jasper-Dubois County Contractual Library has been on the waiting list for the service since August of last year. “We started talking about doing this in June and we were put on hold due to the tremendous backlog of libraries signing up for the service,” Erin Doyle said.
Doyle is the de facto e-book wizard for the Jasper Library and yesterday she manned the information desk for anyone interested in learning about the e-book system.
“We have already had several books checked out today,” Doyle said. “And I am reading a book called The History of Salt from our selection of non-fiction books. Its actually really interesting.”
Doyle sees the benefit of having the electronic books available to patrons as she spent about a week sick at home recently. “I read 15 books on my Kindle while I was home, because what else was I going to do?”
With the popularity of the electronic readers and tablet computers the library received many inquests into when they would be offering the e-book downloads. Today after announcing the availability on the library’s Facebook page, Doyle has already met with several patrons to explain how to download the books.
The system is accessible through the the Jasper Public Library’s and the Huntingburg Public Library’s website through links on the homepage. New users will have to set up accounts using their library card number. Each account can have up to six devices registered for downloadable content. Patrons can even download audiobooks for popular mp3 players like the Ipod.
“There is a list explaining what devices work with the system,” Doyle said. “The list of devices is so big they should have just said what won’t work.”
Individuals can download onto their smart phone, tablet, laptop, and pc, but each individual can only download one book at a time. The books are available on the digital device for three weeks and then it is no longer available to be read on the device. The book is will become available about ten minutes after it is returned.
The Jasper-Dubois Contractual Library has signed up for a sampler pack plan that features favorite authors like Baldacci and Patterson, but only one copy of each of these authors books is available for download at this time. As the program becomes more popular the library can upgrade to a broader selection of titles.
Doyle stated she felt the system could save the library money on books it normally rents. “When a bestseller comes out and we know it will be popular, we will buy four copies and rent eight copies,” She explained. “With the Overdrive system we may not have to rent so many copies.”
The system has had some hiccups in being put in place. Amazon originally did not participate in the library system but has since come on board. Also the library can only check the book out so many times and then they have to repurchase the book. On the other hand the books cost about $5.00 less for the electronic version than the hardback version.
Huntingburg Public Library Director Kathy Lett stated the program has become more popular since this Christmas. Huntingburg signed on with Evergreen; a consortium of Indiana Libraries that collectively has access to Overdrive. They are able to offer thousands of titles through their affiliation.
Jasper Contractual Library is able to offer the system to patrons in every township except Patoka and Cass townships which are served by the Huntingburg Library.
Another aspect of this is the decline in fines as the books are returned automatically when the time expires. Neither library was able to speculate on how that would affect operating costs for a library.
Huntingburg Public Library and Jasper Public Library have individuals available to help patrons download books.
Huntingburg electronic library is accessible here.
Jasper-Dubois electronic library is accessible here.
