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E-books continue to make their way into America’s libraries, even without a coordinated approach such as TeleRead. In fact, you can even check them out now from the little library in West Hurley, New York.

You can borrow RCA-branded readers to enjoy text. But they are not as popular as LeapPads. As if to confirm Allen Renear’s multimedia-related observations, an article in the Daily Freeman of Sept. 2 says that use of the audio-enhanced LeapPads is “growing by, well, leaps and bounds…

“The LeapPad books talk, spelling or sounding out a word the child touches with a pointer. Touch a part of the human skeleton and the book will tell you the name of the bone. Interactive games teach geography, and the list goes on.”

LeapPads use flip pages of paper. Still, in the future, everything could be electronic.

Meanwhile the West Hurley system undoubtedly would welcome other improvements. Library Director Kara Lustiber says her staffers spend plenty of time “loading up the books, making sure they work properly and showing patrons how to use it. We prefer to be in the business of loaning content, not services.”

Exactly! TeleRead would drive down the cost of the hardware and put many thousands of books online, so that local librarians could spend more time as mentors and on customized links–and less time doing scutwork.

If nothing else, imagine the greater reading choices for parents and children at home. And, yes, this can matter. In a column in the Indianapolis Star of August 30, Jane Lichtenberg notes the strong connection between success in life and being read to as a child. And yet sales of children’s books actually fell eight percent in the States last year. Perhaps it’s time for publishers to show more open-mindedness toward the library model, which, in a TeleRead incarnation, could compensate them fairly for use of the material

(Indianapolis article via LIS News.)

 
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