Week 9: Exercise #22 Explore Ebooks and Audio Ebooks

I had heard many librarians proclaim they are book lovers. However, I rarely heard people mention they are fans for E-books or Audio E-books.

Once a while, I would like to listen to Book CD while I have a long drive. Personally I do not enjoy E-books or Audio E-books in general. The main reason for me is “listening” or reading” an E-book does not give me the feeling of exactly turning the pages and reading something real. However, I can foresee E-books are an inevitable trend to hook book reading to the Z generation who owns all sorts of electron gears.

I explored JPL’s E-books site carefully since I had been questioned at information desk and did not know the proper answers. Now I would like to propose my observations here.

First, to most customers, they do not know the difference between Net Library and Overdrive Digital Library. They do not understand under what circumstance they should search a title in Net Library or when they should go to Digital Library. This type of basic questions should be informed through the SLPL E-book Site to let the customers know about it.

Second, Another problem puzzled me is the search feature in SJPL E-books site. I wonder if this search feature is linked to SLPL’s book catalog. If yes, why isn’t there an advanced search feature here? I assume if there is the advanced search feature would help librarians or customers yield more precise results.

Third, why E-Books is listed under the category of Research instead of the home page?
Here is the link takes me to the E-book collections.
http://www.sjlibrary.org/research/ebooks/index.htm

I assume E-books are considered an important part of the SJPL collection and cost lots of money to subscribe, shouldn't it put at a dominant place for people to see and to use? I doubt the public would know it is hidden under Research. Is there a particular reason for doing this?

Thanks!