Books Are Virtually at Your Fingertips

"Thanks to the New Hanover County library, students not wanting to read Shakespeare can now access the Cliffs Notes on their home computers free of charge.

All it takes is a library card, which also is good for the more traditional – and much longer – hard copies of the English playwright's works that line the library's shelves.

The 350 yellow-covered Cliffs Notes study aides, which are supposed to be used in conjunction with – not as a replacement for – reading great literary works, are some of the 7,000 electronic books that recently have been added to a statewide library database maintained by the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources." [The Wilmington Star, via EBookad, via Library Stuff]

At SLS, we've got a bunch of libraries that are part of a netLibrary group purchase that includes the Cliffs Notes series. Unfortunately, we haven't done a very good job of promoting it, even though the records are included in the SWAN catalog and a patron can link directly into netLibrary and check out a book.

I love this service. I can remember being in high school and wishing for a copy of a CN title the night before a book report, and now students can get those titles after the library has closed for the evening. Of course, there's still only one copy online because libraries can't afford multiples, but the service is still valuable. I'm glad we've decided to continue our license. I'm not happy that we don't actually own any of the content - that we have to keep paying every year for access - but we don't have any choices yet.

I want us to partner more with the schools to help the kids use these collections. I'd like to see us highlight the computer books in there (as well as the travel and reference titles), advertise the service more, and show publishers how libraries can help them.