Sue Smith - Harker School

1. eBooks for Schools
A Collection Development Odyssey
Sue Smith, Library Director
The Harker School
August 7, 2012

2. Today’s Journey
 Why E-Books?
 Key considerations for schools
 Content (often determines the other 2)
 Format
 DRM
 Where to begin?
 For further reading . . A tour of our LibGuide

3. Why eBooks?
 Embedded content  Space-savers (more space for
collaboration, maker spaces)
 More engaging
 Time-savers (processing,
 Instant & remote use shelving, inventory, weeding)
 Hyperlinks to source material  No wear-out/replacement issues
 Differentiated learning (text-to-  Environmentally friendly (?)
speech, font size, etc.)
 Simultaneous multi-use
 Virtual bookshelf; project
features  Patron-driven acquisition

4. Our Story . . .
 Harker
 K-12 Independent school on 3 campuses
 1:1 Laptops, 6-12; Chromebooks 4-5, iPads, K-3
 Toe-in-the-water approach
 Began in 2006 with 10 Gale eBooks
 Own 1688 titles K-12,
 Subscribe to approximately 30K titles through Gale’s
QuestiaSchool.com

5. Some Stats . . .
 At least 20% of all book sales come from e-books, and the
numbers are rising fast.
 Total e-book sales in January 2012 came in close to twice
those of a year previously, and were more than ten times the
figure for January 2009.
 The Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that 21%
of all Americans have read an e-book in the past year, with
the proportion predictably higher among the young.
 Millions of free books in the public domain have been
digitized by Google Books.
 Amazon and Barnes & Noble sell hundreds of thousands of
copyrighted titles for a price usually lower than print.
From “The Bookless Library” by David Bell; The New Republic, Aug 2, 2012 issue

6. But What Does this Look Like for
School Libraries?
 EX: 17 VOYA-reviewed books from Jan-June 2012 with 5
Q scores; 14 fiction & 3 non-fiction:
 Only one is available as eBook for purchase thru Ingram
or Follett (not the same title!)
 All but one available for Kindle at 20-25% of hard cover
Amazon price.
 All but 4 available from iBooks at approx. 60% of the
MSRP
Current models favor individual use

7. “If you talk to ONE school librarian
about eBook strategies you’ll hear
one school’s story.”
 Consider your users
 Consider the available technology
 Consider your collection needs

8. Four Key “Dualities”
 Fiction v. non-fiction
 Single v. multiple user
 Device download v. web-based access
 Ownership v. lease (annual
subscriptions)

9. Collection Development
Questions
 How do I start? Should I jump in now or wait?
 Where will the $$$ come from?
 How will eBooks affect my print collection?
 What if I make a bad decision?
 Is there duplication with database content?
 How will my students find the eBooks? (“discovery”)
 Are the answers different for elementary? Middle school? HS?

10. Collection Development Policies
Must Change!
 Increasingly centralized
 Not as responsive to diverse populations
 Balance e-collections with purchase of individual titles
 Duplication of E- and print makes sense
 E- may stimulate print and vice versa
 Patron-driven vs. balanced collection

11. Everything you always wanted to
know about eBooks and were
afraid to ask. . . . .