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Winter is a popular time for book lovers, the season where many of us enjoy staying in, rugging up and delving into a good book. But do we read more in the winter months or in summer? Summer brings to mind images of sunny days, cool drinks and reading a book on the deck or under the […]

Welcome to YALSA”s first in an occasional series in which two bloggers debate a topic of current interest to librarians serving teens.

In this first post YALSA Blog Manager and High School Librarian, mk Eagle, and YALSA Immediate Past President and Educational Technology Consultant, Linda W. Braun, talk e-collections.

Linda Says, “Go Heavy into e – It will Be Freeing”

Think About the Time You’ll Have
A lot of what I hear when I work with librarians in schools and public libraries is “I don’t have the time.” People say, “ I don’t have the time to keep up with technology, books, programs, teen news and trends.” You name it, librarians are telling me they don’t have the time. Why not? Sometimes it’s because they are spending time on tasks that are important when working with a physical collection, but might not be the best use of time when it comes to connecting with teens and building strong relationships. For example, how many minutes or hours do librarians working with teens spend looking for a book that is misshelved? Or what about all of the time that’s spent shelving books because there are carts and carts loaded with stuff that needs to be reshelved and if the librarian doesn’t do it, who will? Or, what about all the time a book can’t be found because it is sitting on a cart in order to be reshelved? If many of the materials are e than that means these shelving issues go away and time is freed up to focus on other parts of the job.

Think about all of the time you would have to talk with teens about the books they would like to read, or time you would have for getting to know teens so that you can build relationships in order to purchase the e-materials that they might be most interested in. Think about the time you would have to work on collection development, and perhaps be able to find materials more successfully because you have time to look beyond the traditional resources that are most easily and quickly accessible. Maybe if the library was heavy on the e-side, the collection would actually improve. And, as they say, “time is money.” So, if you have time to spend on other important tasks, doesn’t that mean smart use of your budget?

Think About All the Space You’ll Have
But, freeing up time because you no longer deal with shelving and shelf-reading isn’t the only positive when working with an e-heavy collection. Think about the space you’ll open up that teens can use for working on personal devices. Space that you can turn into creation labs so teens can write their own books, create movies, develop games. The image on the right might seem scary, shelves without any materials on them. Look around your library, what if you could take out a majority of the shelving units and use that space more as a learning/information commons instead of as storage and display for books and other materials? What opportunities would that open up? What would you be able to do that you haven’t had the chance to do yet? I bet you have some ideas.

Think About How You Give Teens the Opportunity to Select and Read in Private
I am sure you know a teen that isn’t comfo

Title: Copia
Platform: Desktop, iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7 (iPad features differ from features available for other devices.)
Cost: Free (Books need to be purchased.)

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately talking with librarians and thinking about the world of digital reading beyond the need for libraries to make books available for checkout and download to digital devices. One of the reasons for this is that I’ve been looking at apps that provide users with opportunities to be social within the digital reading environment. Copia is one such app.

As with traditional ereader apps, Copia makes it possible to read books inside of the app. The app contains a searchable catalog of titles and users can put titles on a wish list as well as purchase them within the app. It’s also possible to search the catalog from the Copia website and add and purchase titles from the web for reading on a device or desktop.

What makes Copia different than other ereading apps is the ability to share notes with friends from right inside the app. For example, I could be reading Before I Fall on my iPad and have a thought about something that happens in the story. I write a note about what I’m thinking in the section where the thought comes to me. A friend of mine is reading the same book and gets to that section and sees my note. He can read the note, add his own note, and even reply to specifically what I wrote inside my digital copy of the book. I will then see the note that he added.

Think about teens writing notes to each other about what they are reading while they are reading – a new form of IM perhaps. Or, consider members of a book discussion group reading a book for their next face-to-face meeting. As they read they collect notes to bring to the discussion. But, they aren’t private notes they are notes available to everyone in the discussion group. Wouldn’t that be a good way to prepare for and expand the discussion of the book? A pre-discussion group discussion?

The user of Copia can decide who notes are shared with. I invite my friend Renee to join me on Copia and give her permission to see what I write inside my book. She can do the same with me. That way our in-book sharing is private and not open to the world at large.

Copia is one app that demonstrates the present and future of reading on digital devices; it’s definitely the type of reading experience we are going to be seeing more of. Teens and librarians will want to consider the features of apps like Copia and think about the use of social reading features in order to expand reading experiences and gain better understanding of the written word.