New TPL iKits

As Diana mentioned in her recent blog post, e-readers are certainly of interest to our customers who in turn expect us, their local information specialists, to be knowledgeable about mobile devices and the e-products that TPL offers.  Without hands-on experience it can be difficult to answer such questions. 

 A friend call me a few months ago looking for advice – she was thinking of buying an e-reader for her son in French immersion as she thought the built-in dictionary would help him with his reading.  She had two questions – which e-reader would I recommend and did the library have e-books in French.  At that time I had yet to try out an e-reader so my first thought was – they have built-in dictionaries, wow!  I was however, able to tell her which e-readers work with TPL’s OverDrive eBook Service but that currently TPL does not have French e-books (though they are available for purchase through Amazon).

Now TPL staff will have the chance to try out different mobile devices by booking a TPL iKit.  Each area has an iKit which includes a netbook (so you can practice downloading the software from TPL’s website) a Sony e-reader, iPad, and Kobo (so you experiment with downloading eBooks, eMusic and eVideos). Once you feel proficient you can offer sessions for the public to let them try it out. Hands-on time will definitely help you feel more confident answering customers’ questions.

So far staff at Lillian H. Smith and NYCL have offered public sessions which were well attended and received positive feedback.

A User Ed script will be available to staff later this spring, and "Conducting e-Device Workshops" staff training sessions will (likely) be offered in the fall.

But don’t wait – reserve an iKit for your branch today!

A good website to check out for more information about the features of the different devices and products is e-bookreader.com

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