eBooks For Libraries Petition–Sign It Now!

Frustrated by not being able to download new releases in eBooks from your Library? Sign the petition here.

LION Consortium Calls A Boycott On Random House eBooks

Richard Conroy, Director of the Essex Library and President of the LION consortium (25 academic, public and school libraries located in southern and ventral Connecticut), has sent a letter to Random House notifying the publisher that the 25-library consortium will boycott purchasing Random House eBooks due to their price hike on March 1. The price hike doubled or nearly tripled the price Random House is charging libraries for their eBooks.

According to Conroy, Random House’s pricing of an eBook that would have cost the LION consortium $35 to lease through their OverDrive service on February 29, now costs them $105. “A private individual can purchase the ebook edition of that same book through Amazon for $17.99, which LION consortium members felt made Random House’s decision to raise prices for libraries both discriminatory and totally arbitrary,” Conroy said in a statement emailed to Library Journal.

“The LION consortium feels strongly that it is important for libraries to take a stand against this unfair practice and its disproportionate impact on library users,” says Richard Conroy. The South Shore Public Libraries in Nova Scotia are also boycotting Random House.

Food For Fines For December

Food For Fines At The Essex Library

From December 1 through 30, 2011 the Essex Library will be accepting non-perishable food items in exchange for your Essex Library fines. Up to $1.00 will be forgiven for each item you donate.

All items collected will be brought to the Shoreline Soup Kitchen and Pantries. Please be sure that any item you donate has not reached its expiration date. Glass jars and bottles will not be accepted, but we will gladly accept canned goods and anything contained in plastic or a cardboard box.

Start the New Year off right with a clean Essex Library record, while simultaneously helping your neighbors in need!

Kindle EBooks Now Available Through Overdrive

Essex Library patrons–as part of the LION Library system’s Overdrive service, may now download eBooks to their Kindles. The announcement last spring that Kindle compatibility would take place sometime in 2011, followed by the hint this summer that this would happen in September, has proved to be true.

We have put together a few screenshots to walk you through the process. As always, if you have questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at the Library.

Overdrive has kept the download process simple: browse the catalog for a book*,

click “Add to Cart” for your selection

then click “Proceed to Checkout”.

After clicking “Confirm Check Out”,


select “Get for Kindle”.

This will redirect you to the Amazon website where you will see the “Get Library Book” button along with a window to select which Kindle device or app you will use for the download.

Next, after dutifully browsing Amazon’s commercial offerings, click “Download Now”.

You can download the book directly using a WI-FI signal depending on your device/app or connect your Kindle to your computer using a USB cable. If using the latter, when prompted, use the “Save As” option and click OK.

Open your Kindle file on your computer and drag and drop the book into the Documents folder. It will appear on your Kindle immediately.

*It should be noted that the Overdrive service is very popular and many, if not most, of the popular titles will be checked out at any given time. Simply put the book on hold by clicking Request/Hold and you’ll be notified by email when it’s available.

Overdrive Ebook Downloads To Kindles Have Begun…Out West

Library patrons have been awaiting the ability to borrow ebooks to read on their Kindles. It was hinted earlier this summer that downloads to the Kindle would go live in September. That day is here, if you are a patron of the Seattle Public Library or the King County Library System.  These libraries have been selected for the beta testing and it seems to be going well so far. There is still no information as to when Overdrive ebooks will be available for Kindle users nationwide.

What we can tell you is that the ebooks will be available for all Kindle models as well as Kindle apps for other devices and the Kindle Cloud Reader. You’ll have to download via WI-FI or connect your Kindle to a computer with a USB cable as the 3G wireless service is not supported.  When you check out your books you’ll be redirected to the Amazon website to login to your Amazon account (or create one if you don’t have one already) and then provide your library card number. As expected, Amazon will be including some offers for you to buy books during the process. Amazon’s “Whispersync” technology will also preserve your digital notes and bookmarks in case you buy the book from Amazon later or check it out a second time. The service is only available in the U.S.

Stay tuned for updates as to when Kindle compatibility will arrive for LION library patrons.

Architect Rafael Pelli Talks Sustainability

On Friday, May 20 at 7 p.m., the Essex Library will present architect Rafael Pelli as part of its Centerbrook Architects Lecture Series.  Mr. Pelli, a Partner with Pelli, Clark, Pelli will present “It’s Not Easy Being Green; Interesting Environmental Issues In Architecture From Around The World”. The talk will be held at Essex Meadows with wine and cheese served beginning at 6:30 p.m. Click here for directions to Essex Meadows.

Rafael Pelli is the Partner directing the Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects New York office, established in 2000. Since that time, he has directed the design for several of the firm’s New York projects. These include Bloomberg Tower, a 1.4 million-square-foot, mixed-use high-rise in Midtown that contains the new headquarters for Bloomberg L.P. and the residential condominiums One Beacon Court. Mr. Pelli was the designer of the reconstruction of the World Financial Center, and the lead designer for a new U.S. Federal Courthouse in Brooklyn. He was also the designer for three high-rise apartment buildings in Battery Park City: the Solaire, the Verdesian and the Visionaire. The three buildings have achieved significant milestones in sustainable design.

For more information on the 2010-2011 Centerbrook Architects Lecture Series, please click here.

The Makings Of A Green Library

OK, better late than never. We missed posting this on Earth Day last week (April 22) but it’s been a busy time for Libraries…and Librarians. What is it about the Essex Library that makes it a ‘green’ Library you ask?

• For starters, like all Libraries, we renew and recycle books, audiobooks, magazines and DVDs. We also renew and recycle computers.
• We recycle our newspapers, magazines, paper, bottles and cans, and plastic bags–including the bags our newspapers arrive in.
• Our lighting includes many fluorescent bulbs and we use motion detectors and timers to keep lights off when not in use.
• The Library is heated and cooled, in part, by a geothermal system.
• The Library uses green cleaning supplies throughout.

There are other efforts made during the renovation including recycling demolition and construction waste, using low-water toilets, and using construction materials and products from local sources.

Let us know what else we should be doing to keep Essex green.

We Told You So…Amazon & OverDrive Partner Up For Ebooks

We’ve been predicting for a while now that Amazon would eventually concede to the pressure to allow its Kindle users to download books for free from the OverDrive eBook lending services offered by public libraries…and that day has come. Last week Amazon announced that they signed an agreement with OverDrive with the service to be launched for Kindle users at an unspecified date later this year. This is great news for Kindle owners who’ve, up to now, been turned away from Libraries offering the OverDrive service.

Currently, the OverDrive eBooks can be downloaded to many devices including the Barnes & Noble Nook, Borders’ Kobo, Sony eReaders, Apple devices and many, many others. To see the complete list, click here.  Service to Kindle owners will maintain the same lending rules–lending periods and number of downloads allowed as delineated by your local Library. The Essex Library allows patrons to check out up to 4 eBooks each with a lending period of 14 days.

Here’s a statement from Amazon with details regarding the new deal:

SEATTLE—April 20, 2011—(NASDAQ: AMZN)— Amazon today announced Kindle Library Lending, a new feature launching later this year that will allow Kindle customers to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 libraries in the United States. Kindle Library Lending will be available for all generations of Kindle devices and free Kindle reading apps.

“We’re excited that millions of Kindle customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from their local libraries,” said Jay Marine, Director, Amazon Kindle. “Customers tell us they love Kindle for its Pearl e-ink display that is easy to read even in bright sunlight, up to a month of battery life, and Whispersync technology that synchronizes notes, highlights and last page read between their Kindle and free Kindle apps.”

Customers will be able to check out a Kindle book from their local library and start reading on any Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone. If a Kindle book is checked out again or that book is purchased from Amazon, all of a customer’s annotations and bookmarks will be preserved.

“We’re doing a little something extra here,” Marine continued. “Normally, making margin notes in library books is a big no-no. But we’re extending our Whispersync technology so that you can highlight and add margin notes to Kindle books you check out from your local library. Your notes will not show up when the next patron checks out the book. But if you check out the book again, or subsequently buy it, your notes will be there just as you left them, perfectly Whispersynced.”

Harper Collins, Overdrive In Library E-Book Mess

Once upon a time. For all us librarians wondering how the fairy tale of e-books might play out, we’re seeing it become  a horror story instead. DRM (digital rights management is the term for technologies used to restrict/limit how digital materials are accessed) is the poisoned apple being used by publishers to kill a library’s ability to make e-books available to its  patrons. Prior to February 24th, Overdrive– a national vendor of digital materials to libraries, could offer customers e-book downloads on an unlimited basis. Harper Collins has just mandated a limit of 26 check-outs of its e-books through their vendors and distributors to libraries, including Overdrive. Even more troubling, Harper Collins wants to limit which patrons a library lends its digital materials to. But that’s another blog post.

Libraries are at an important crossroads regarding access to digital materials. We want to provide the services and materials our patrons want–in the formats they want. Those of us too small, read: too poor, to contemplate an Overdrive service on our own, purchase through a consortium. In the case of the Essex Library, we purchase Overdrive services through the LION Libraries consortium. With a limit of 26 check-outs on any given e-book—and you can anticipate other publishers will be climbing onto Harper Collins’ restrictive bandwagon, LION’s 365,000 patrons will find their ability to access Overdrive’s e-books so severely diminished as to be useless. Already there are publishers, including two of the largest, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster– who don’t allow any library circulation of their e-books.

What can libraries do to keep e-book patrons happy?

Author Cory Doctorow advocates a library boycott of all DRM-protected materials. Librarians across the country are disgusted, discouraged and angry. You can follow their comments on Twitter at the #hcod hashtag. None of this can be resolved until publishers come up with a viable business model for digital books. It won’t serve them well to distance their authors from potential readers, digital or print. The publishing industry as a whole is in trouble and alienating libraries who serve millions of readers by spending billions of dollars on materials just doesn’t seem productive. A call to arms, in the guise of library consortia joining together, collaborating and using their combined buying power to persuade publishers to loosen, or just plain lose, the restrictions on digital materials has been issued by librarian Matthew D. Hamilton.

We need a happy ending here for everyone…authors, publishers, vendors and readers.  Anybody got any great ideas?

Bad News, Crime Fans

Foiled again! This time predicted bad weather has forced Dr. Henry Lee to postpone his highly anticipated Crime Talk at the Essex Library originally scheduled for Weds. January 26th. Check back with the Library 860 767-1560 for more information about a snow date in late March/early April to be held at the Valley Regional High School Auditorium which should allow us to welcome all interested parties.