E-books are rising to the top of the library.
During Freshmen Transition Day in the GHS library students learned that the high school will be receiving an online library. With E-books slowly climbing their way up, what will happen to printed materials? What will the online library do that the one real library can’t? What E-books will we be getting?
“For now we will keep the books,” GHS librarian Mrs. Reich commented. There are many books in the library, and there will still be a great deal of them in the near future.
There are more than 200 student bundles of books via math, literature, science, and history books. For the time being, there are only a few fiction titles — but the fiction titles will have unlimited access!
“Unfortunately, the publishers don’t like the unlimited access deal,” Mrs. Reich commented. “And to be honest, it’s because there is less money to be made if the publisher, writer, and editor have their books sold once but a thousand students read it at the same time,” Mrs. Reich added.
One thing that students will not be able to do is check out books that are not listed on the school website. So that means an individual could not get to the Google Play store and download Dracula or some other book.
Any time after school students can visit the website using an at home computer or their iphone, ipod, Kindle Fire, or Android. The students could have access 24/7.
Some of the other features of this online tool include: allowing students to review a book, but the review goes to the librarian first so she can review it; students can highlight passages in a book and have no other reader see their highlights; and students can now take notes on their books without having to take out a pen or paper. Books get checked in automatically after two weeks. Meaning no more late fees.
Not all the books will be online; they cost the same as the heavy paper ones. It will take more than a year to remove the textbooks. But the good news is some of them will be online or for download, although the school staff would want them to be online.
“I think it’s cool just to know that I don’t have to visit the library just to get a book. I’m looking forward to it,” says junior Chris Gunn.
This is the website that the high school students may visit to grab a new online book.