Sutherland Shire Libraries Staff News

Amazon Kindles the Christmas Cheer

Happy New Year!

Hard to believe, but it's ten years since I came into work on New Years Day to switch on computers. To test that all was working and to confirm that our library systems had not been destroyed by the dreaded Millenium Bug.

Ten years ago nobody could have predicted the advances we have seen, but it's now over a year since we went live with our online Overdrive partnership, allowing our customers to download audiobooks and ebooks direct to their home computers.
Services like Overdrive are at the cutting edge of what libraries offer. There are still hurdles to be overcome, mainly in the area of compatibility of file types and devices on which to play or read what you have downloaded and in the contentious area of geographic publication rights.
But its early days, and after a slow start it looks like sales of ebooks are about to really take off:

"On Christmas Day customers bought more online books than hard-copy ones from internet giant Amazon.com.
The retailer also said its e-book reader, the Kindle, "has become the most gifted item in Amazon's history".
"On Christmas Day, for the first time ever, customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books," Amazon said.
Amazon e-books can also be read on Apple iPhone or iPod Touch devices. The Kindle online store boasts a library of 390,000 digitised books for sale.
While Amazon has not released figures for Kindle sales, Forrester Research estimated in October that the Kindle has a nearly 60 per cent share of the US market, followed by the Sony Reader with 35 per cent.
The Kindle, recently released for Australia, also faces competition in the US from the "Nook," a new device sold by US bookstore giant Barnes & Noble.
Barnes & Noble said it sold all of its Nooks one month before Christmas, and that the next shipment will not be available until early January.
Forrester estimated that three million e-readers will be sold in the US this year, up from a previous forecast of two million units, and forecast that e-reader sales will double to six million units next year.
Source: http://www.news.com.au/technology/amazon-kindle-christmas-e-book-sales-beat-print/story-e6frfro0-1225813905546"



posted by Max.

Wow! - have you discovered My EBSCOhost?

Did you know you can create a personal account on any EBSCO database?
If signed in to My EBSCOhost, you can -

• Save search preferences, documents, images, etc. for future access
• Organise your research by creating and naming your own folders for storing searches under particular topics
• Add and save comments to any retreived document
• Share your folders with others / View others' folders
• Create a journal alert that will email you whenever a new journal issue is added to EBSCO
• Gain access to your saved research remotely and from within any EBSCO database

How is this useful to Our Customers?
This is a powerful organisational tool we can recommend for our customers who are researching a topic for work, study or personal interest.
Often customers get their first taste of EBSCO through being shown by staff in the library, and that first session might not be quite enough.
Getting them signed up to My EBSCOhost means any searching they have done at the library can be saved then continued at home on their own PC or maybe the next day when they return to the library with more time on their hands.

Don't Overwhelm Them with the Features
Of course, this service is not for everybody - people sometimes just want a couple of articles on the spot to satisfy their information needs.
If, however, My EBSCOhost seems the right thing for your customer, at least introduce 2 things to them -
1. How to signup (and sign back in)
2. How to save searches and documents into a folder (it doesn't have to be a custom folder).

How Could it be Useful for Librarians?
A recurring school assignment enquiry is Year 10 English students needing a science fiction novel to read.
Rather than perfoming a new search every time for each student who wanders in the library, staff could create a Custom Folder called "Year 10 Science Fiction" then save individual book records, reading guides, reviews or searches into this folder.
The saved search would be, for example, the subject "science fiction" with a limit to the reading level "Teens", or even a specified Lexile Reading Level.
Staff could even email their expertly crafted search strategy from the folder straight to the student's email address!

Want to Learn More About It?
I recommend you just jump in and sign up! It's quick and easy.
As we learnt from Web 2.0 training, the best way to sell something to our customers is to first use it ourselves.

To get you started, watch the 5 minute promo.
Then click on the Help link from any EBSCO database and view the topics under Personalization and Using Folders

Good Luck!
Brian

Legal books available online

Three titles from our collection are now available in full text online.

Defend Yourself: Facing a Charge in Court by Tim Anderson.
2nd edition, The Federation Press, 2008.
A practical guide to defending a criminal charge in court which covers arrest and questioning, bail, dealing with lawyers, court procedure, how to plead, hearings and trials, preparation, evidence, proof, examination in court, sentencing, and appeals.

Guilty Your Honour: Representing yourself in New South Wales Local Courts when charged with drink driving by Helen Walsh.
3rd edition, Walsh Publishing, 2006.
A practical guide to defending a drink driving charge. Examines the offence and penalties, whether to plead guilty, whether to get a lawyer, how to prepare for court, and what happens on the day of court.

Guide to Wills and Estates by Rosemary Long.
Published by the Legal Information Access Centre as an update of Rest Assured: a legal guide to wills, estates and funerals,(4th edition), a title previously published by Redfern Legal Centre Publishing, University of New South Wales Press, 2005.
A practical guide to the creation of wills, changing, revoking, or challenging a will, rights of creditors and beneficiaries to a will, probate and intestacy, and legal fees.

Find more legal resources online at http://www.legalanswers.sl.nsw.gov.au/

Have you explored Trove yet?

One advantage I have discovered of using the newly launched (and accessible to public) Trove over our Libraries Australia login -

A borrower wanted to read a copy of the 19th Century biography "The story of John G. Paton told for young folks".
LA produced a list of 24 bib records of varying editions and imprints. So one has to click through each one to see the holdings.

In Trove, however, despite finding 778 results, these were easily limited to 19 bib. records -

As you can see, the beauty of this results list is that all the NSW holdings of those 19 records can be viewed at once by clicking on the NSW tab.
I know of no similar feature in Libraries Australia.

Furthermore, the initial results list in Trove provided a direct link to a free ebook version of this book (look for the green tick).

In the end, the borrower, rather than paying $15.70 to ILL from a Uni, found a copy for sale in the Koorong bookshop for $15
(If only Trove could link into that bookshop catalogue too!)

I would recommend all staff keep Trove in mind and promote it to our customers, particularly for Australian subject enquiries,
Search for Ned Kelly or Tasmanian Devil and you will get an idea of its usefulness in retrieving all kinds of formats, many of them immediately accessible online.

Brian

Just read this thoughtful blog post about how Programming skills could transform librarians' roles.  The gist is that, with the increasing amount of data being made available on the web, the library of the future will be greatly enhanced by being able to blend that data with our data to increase the relevance of our offerings.

I couldn't agree more, but read it yourself and let us know what you think by leaving a comment.