eBooks and eAudiobooks available through Jacobs library
By Kassie Kallner
IV Leader Staff, Mar 15, 2007
New technology continues to change the way we live our
lives. Now, it can change the way we read books and do research.
Jacobs Library offers students and faculty the chance to
listen to eAudiobooks or to view eBooks, which they can download from the
library’s website through their NetLibrary collection. The library began
offering eAudiobooks to students during the summer of 2006.
There are nearly 1,500 eAudiobooks available to students
ranging from fiction, nonfiction, classic and contemporary titles. Also
available is the Pimsleur foreign language series, which offers twenty-five
different language courses. Students can download these audio books to a
computer and listen to it on that computer or transfer it to an MP3 player;
however, iPods are not compatible with this service.
Once downloaded, the audio book can be listened to for three
weeks and renewed for three additional weeks. Students can access an eAudiobook
through the NetLibrary collection accessible through the libraries website,
http://www.ivcc.edu/library, by clicking on the Books link, and then the
NetLibrary link.
Students have to create a free account to download the audio
books. eBooks, which the library began offering to students in 2001, is a
collection of ten thousand books available to IVCC students anytime on the
internet. These books are works of nonfiction geared towards the needs of
college students. Readers can read the books by clicking on links to load
certain chapters.
They can also print out the text page by page. However, just
like a real book, only one person can have a particular eBook open at a time.
The accessibility and ease of doing research was of
particular interest to library staff in acquiring this technology. “Many college
students have full time schedules and after school they rush off to work; they
don’t have time to visit our library,” said Joanne Jalley, library technician.
“eBooks give them a chance to do research when they get off work at 9 o’clock at
night and the library is not open.”
Student Tom Myer learned about eBooks through the libraries’
orientation session. “I have never used them before but they seem easy to use,”
Myer said. “It is very convenient that you can access them at home anytime.”
Students can search for an eBook through the main library search catalog or
through the NetLibrary link on the libraries website.
These services were provided through the CARLI, Consortium of
Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois, group, of which Jacobs Library is a
member. “It helps us provide a balance,” Jalley said. “Books and libraries will
never go away, but now we can provide you with what you need, in the format that
you need it in.”
IVCC received the first 2,000 eBooks free through CARLI, and
then began purchasing more for an approximate cost of 50 cents per book. Now,
the cost per eBook is around $5, which after the purchase, the library owns that
eBook, said Jalley.
In the past, the IVCC Foundation has helped purchasing some
eBooks for the library. For the eAudiobooks, IVCC pays a subscription of around
$400 to have access to the audio books in the collection.
Last year, students used approximately 2,000 eBooks, and so
far, students have listened to 121 eAudiobooks. “This is a promising start,”
Jalley said.