By Brandon T. Bisceglia
The Digital Bookmobile came to the Milford Public Library July 24 to help promote and expose patrons to the library’s digital services. Photo by Brandon T. Bisceglia.
The Milford Public Library had an unusual visitor July 24: a 53-foot truck full of digital devices, all programmed to introduce patrons to the library’s key digital book borrowing services.
The Digital Bookmobile, a high-tech update on the old-fashioned print bookmobile, is a travelling showcase for OverDrive, the company that owns the Libby app, which provides libraries nationwide access to a cloud-based catalog with thousands of ebooks, audiobooks and magazines.
Inside the trailer were stations set up with tablets and e-readers, all tuned to the Libby app. Visitors could activate an account with their own library card or use one of the preset accounts and explore how the app works. Several assistants were on hand to help people and answer questions.
Marissa Gillett, a digital book specialist with the Bookmobile, said that the point of the digital service is to supplement and expand on what print books have to offer – not replace them.
“If you finish a book at midnight and you want to check out another, or you can’t get to the physical library for some reason, you can still check out a book on Libby,” she said.
Gillett said the app has books for all ages and assists people with varying needs. Every book, for instance, can be read with large type, unlike the limited large-print selection available in the physical library. There are also features to change the shape and spacing of text to make reading easier for those with dyslexia.
“Our goal is to make reading available to all people,” she said.
The Bookmobile travels all over the U.S. and Canada for most of the year visiting schools and libraries. The day before coming to Milford it had been stationed in Danbury.
Milford Public Library Director Christine Angeli said her library tries to promote its print and digital services equally.
“We make sure when we have book discussions that we have physical copies, as well as digital content,” she said. “We pay as much attention to the collection development of our e-content as we do to the print.”
In addition to the Libby app, the library offers the RBdigital service, which also allows patrons to download books and magazines. The library additionally has a weekly email alert called Wowbrary that showcases the newest books, DVDs, CDs, and audio books that have arrived at the library.
Angeli said the digital space is changing the landscape for libraries, which can offer new opportunities for patrons.
“You might be on vacation in Hawaii or Paris and have no book on hand, and you can still access our e-collection,” she said.
It also poses some challenges. For one, libraries are now splitting their limited funds in buying multiple versions of the same content.
“We try to listen to our patrons as much as we can. You know, a lot of people had said when books went digital that would be the death of print. And studies have actually shown the opposite – that more people are reading print now. And I think it’s because digital content has sort of captured people who are in that realm who might not have been readers before,” she said.
“So you find your great author online, and you want to find his four prior books, and you go back into the library looking at the print version. The two have really worked in a symbiotic relationship with each other,” she said.
Libraries have also ceded some of their control over content in the online world to third-party organizations, many of them for-profit companies.
The cost to libraries for e-content, Angeli explained, can be much higher than people would expect. Instead of buying a book outright, for example, libraries usually lease the digital versions from publishers and other content providers.
“Sometimes we purchase that lease and we have it for 24 months or 52 uses, whichever comes first,” she said.
Angeli pointed out that the agreements often restrict the use of the digital file so that, like a physical book, only one person can borrow it at a time. And there’s no opportunity to collect late fees – the file simply disappears when the borrowing period ends. While convenient for borrowers, it also dries up a longstanding source of revenue for the libraries.
Connecticut has been a leader in pushing back against some of the prohibitive parameters being placed around digital content, Angeli said. Milford Public Library has been part of the testing for an ebook platform developed by the Connecticut State Library called eGO that will allow libraries to share their digital collections and integrate the various holdings into one app, called SimplyE.
“The hope is that the leverage that the state can pull in negotiating deals with publishers would help to make pricing and lending models a little bit more in favor of libraries,” she said.