E-book Additions in Romance

Thanks to the generous gift of a member library, we've added 141 ebook titles in the "romance" category to our downloadable collection. A sampling of the authors added, in both EPUB and PDF format:

Mary Balogh
Candace Camp
Jennifer Crusie
Christine Feehan
Karen Hawkins
Linda Howard
Stephanie Laurens
Johanna Lindsey
Fern Michaels
Carla Neggers
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Amanda Quick
Julia Quinn
Nora Roberts
Susan Wiggs
Sherryl Woods

As any of us who collect romance in print know, this genre is one with constant demand. For most OverDrive ebook libraries, the romance genre is their top circulating genre. The Romance Writers Association maintains a section on their website with great statistics. Did you know that romances are the second top-performing category on best seller lists, topped only by movie tie-ins? That, with $1.36 billion in sales in 2009, twice as much spending is done on romances than on mysteries ($674 million)?

DCF and GMBA Additions, audio and ebook

Our Selection Committee periodically checks to see what titles from the current DCF and GMBA awards lists may have been released on audio since our last awards purchase. Here's what we were able to add this time around:

Available ebooks from the 2010-11 DCF list
War Games
Project Sweet Life
Scat
We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
Faith, Hope, and Ivy June
Slob
The Hunchback Assignments

Audio titles from 2010-11 DCF list that were previously unavailable
All the Broken Pieces
11 Birthdays
Faith, Hope, and Ivy June

Available on ebook from the 2010-11 GMBA list
Wicked Lovely

Past GMBA winners now available
Crank (audio)
First Part Last (audio)
Looking for Alaska (ebook)

Trainings Scheduled

We have two sessions of OverDrive's Browse, Check Out, and Download trainings scheduled for November. We encourage staff at all member libraries to participate in one of the trainings, conducted online using the ReadyTalk conference software, so as to get up to speed with the process of ebooks prior to the format becoming widely available for patrons.

Browse, Check Out, Download

Tuesday November 23^rd at 10am eastern

Wednesday November 24^th at 3pm eastern

Description: Learn how to browse, check out, and download OverDrive media. At the end of this course, staff should feel comfortable answering basic questions about your OverDrive service.

Duration: 1.5 hours.

Who should attend: All staff.

The membership contact for each library should have received an email with the access code; if you need the access code, please contact Kip Roberson at kroberson[at]shelburnevt.org for a copy of the email.

Children's E-book Additions

When our site is out of development, you can look forward to this opening collection of some new titles, classic favorites, and titles from the DCF and GMBA awards lists:

A Faraway Island	Annika Thor, Linda Schenck
A Little Princess	Frances Hodgson Burnett
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass	Lewis Carroll
Along for the Ride	Sarah Dessen
Anne of Green Gables	L. M. Montgomery
Before I Fall	Lauren Oliver
Bridge to Terabithia	Katherine Paterson, Donna Diamond
Bud, Not Buddy	Christopher Paul Curtis
Evernight	Claudia Gray
Faith, Hope, and Ivy June	Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Flawless	Sara Shepard
Fragile Eternity	Melissa Marr
Going Bovine	Libba Bray
Harriet the Spy	Louise Fitzhugh
Hate List	Jennifer Brown
Henry Huggins	Beverly Cleary, Tracy Dockray
Hourglass	Claudia Gray
Ink Exchange	Melissa Marr
Killer	Sara Shepard
L. A. Candy	Lauren Conrad
Looking for Alaska	John Green
Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist	Rachel Cohn, David Levithan
Nightfall	L. J. Smith
Perfect	Sara Shepard
Pretty Little Liars	Sara Shepard
Project Sweet Life	Brent Hartinger
Radiant Shadows	Melissa Marr
Ramona and Her Father	Beverly Cleary, Tracy Dockray
Ramona Quimby, Age 8	Beverly Cleary, Tracy Dockray
Ramona the Pest	Beverly Cleary, Tracy Dockray
Scat	Carl Hiaasen
Seth Baumgartner's Love Manifesto	Eric Luper
Shadow Souls	L. J. Smith
Slob	Ellen Potter
Stargazer	Claudia Gray
Stargirl	Jerry Spinelli
Sweet Little Lies	Lauren Conrad
The Bad Beginning	Lemony Snicket, Brett Helquist
The Batboy	Mike Lupica
The Book Thief	Markus Zusak
The Boy Book	E. Lockhart
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind	William Kamkwamba, Bryan Mealer
The Boyfriend List	E. Lockhart
The City of Ember	Jeanne DuPrau
The Dark Deeps	Arthur Slade
The Golden Compass	Philip Pullman
The Graveyard Book	Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean
The Great Gilly Hopkins	Katherine Paterson
The Hobbit	J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien
The Hunchback Assignments	Arthur Slade
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane	Kate DiCamillo, Bagram Ibatoulline
The Secret of the Old Clock	Carolyn G. Keene
The Tale of Despereaux	Kate DiCamillo, Timothy Basil Ering
The Thief	Megan Whalen Turner
The Treasure Map of Boys	E. Lockhart
The Wind in the Willows	Kenneth Grahame
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz	L. Frank Baum
Three Cups of Tea	Greg Mortenson
Unbelievable	Sara Shepard
Walk Two Moons	Sharon Creech
Wanted	Sara Shepard
War Games	Audrey Couloumbis, Akila Couloumbis
We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes	Patrick Jennings
When You Reach Me	Rebecca Stead
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon	Grace Lin
Wicked	Sara Shepard
Wicked Lovely	Melissa Marr
Will Grayson, Will Grayson	John Green, David Levithan
Wintergirls	Laurie Halse Anderson

E-book additions continue

Here are the titles from the most recent batch of e-books:

Title	Author(s)
The Coke Machine	Michael Blanding
Dewey's Nine Lives	Vicki Myron
Djibouti	Elmore Leonard
Dogfight, A Love Story	Matt Burgess
A Duty to the Dead	Charles Todd
Growing Up Laughing	Marlo Thomas
Heat Wave	Richard Castle
Hector and the Search for Happiness	Francois Lelord
Hey Nostradamus!	Douglas Coupland
How to Be an American Housewife	Margaret Dilloway
An Impartial Witness	Charles Todd
Is It Just Me?	Whoopi Goldberg
Lost Empire	Clive Cussler, Grant Blackwood
McGraw-Hill's SAT	Christopher Black, Mark Anestis
Methland	Nick Reding
Naked Heat	Richard Castle
The Next Queen of Heaven	Gregory Maguire
Painted Ladies	Robert B. Parker
Paranormal State	Ryan Buell, Stefan Petrucha
The Perfection Point	John Brenkus
Poker Face	Maureen Callahan
Power	Jeffrey Pfeffer
Power Thoughts	Joyce Meyer
The Replacement	Brenna Yovanoff
Russian Winter	Daphne Kalotay
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating	Elisabeth Tova Bailey
Spartan Gold	Clive Cussler
The Stuff That Never Happened	Maddie Dawson
To the End of the Land	David Grossman, Jessica Cohen
Up from the Blue	Susan Henderson
War Is Boring	David Axe, Matt Bors
Washington	Ron Chernow
The World Is Bigger Now	Euna Lee, Lisa Dickey
You Lost Me There	Rosecrans Baldwin

Please remember that this is a growing collection, and we are aiming for a "soft" opening -- meaning that this collection will continue to grow, and that it may not meet a full load of patron demand until our new membership year begins in January 2011. We continue to purchase popular reading materials, rather than classics and children's books, for this beginning collection. Post January, our purchasing for the e-book collection will meet the same guidelines as our downloadable audio.

Quick Facts About Our Ebook Collection

Some things to remember about our just-starting-collection:

In general:

• We will be offering trainings on ebooks through OverDrive. As with our previous trainings, these will be done online. All member libraries should ensure staff attend one of these trainings, even if you attended a training that covered ebooks during OverDrive's Open Training Month. Look for a future post with information on trainings, including dates.
• Our collection currently stands at over 300 purchased titles, with more purchases likely before the end of 2010. The collection should grow significantly after 2011 membership dues begin to be collected; ebooks and downloadable audio both have collection budgets.
• We are participating in the Project Gutenberg partnership with OverDrive, which adds access to over 15,000 ebooks in the public domain to our collection. These titles include works by many authors your patrons will be interested: Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and more. Be sure to advertise this collection to your patrons as well. Teachers and students may find the collection particularly useful.
  
• Your library's fee on your 2011 Membership Agreement included access for all of your registered patrons to both downloadable audio and ebooks.

About ebooks in particular:

• Ebooks expire off both your computer and your device at the end of the circulation period. This is different from downloadable audio titles, which expire off your computer and not off your device.
• Ebooks can be read on a computer using Adobe Digital Editions, and can also be read on devices such as the Nook, various Sony products, and, coming soon, the iPad. For a full list of compatible devices, see http://www.overdrive.com/resources/drc/compatibleebookdevices.aspx.
• Kindles are not compatible with the OverDrive collection. This is a choice on the part of Amazon and the Kindle, which use a proprietary file type.
• Ebooks can be returned early. Again, this is different from downloadable audio titles.

As with downloadable audio, these guidelines around the downloading process, the format, lending time, and the ability to return early -- collectively referred to as Digital Rights Management, or DRM -- are determined by the publisher and the publishing community. We do not have control over these issues. OverDrive is aware that most libraries and library patrons would like to see early return of downloadable audio titles, but this is prohibited by the publisher.

The E-book Collection Begins!

Once the Listen Up! Vermont site comes out of development (necessary to add e-books), our patrons can look forward to the following titles as part of the opening collection:

Title	Author(s)
And Then There Were None	Agatha Christie
Dark Star	Alan Furst
The Miracle at Speedy Motors	Alexander McCall Smith
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency	Alexander McCall Smith
The Count of Monte Cristo	Alexandre Dumas
Away from Her	Alice Munro
The Love of a Good Woman	Alice Munro
Keeper	Andrea Gillies
Juliet	Anne Fortier
Medium Raw	Anthony Bourdain
Third World America	Arianna Huffington
The Audacity of Hope	Barack Obama
Dreams from My Father	Barack Obama
Animal Dreams	Barbara Kingsolver
The Fort	Bernard Cornwell
Pinheads and Patriots	Bill O'Reilly
Dracula	Bram Stoker, Elizabeth Kostova
American Psycho	Bret Easton Ellis
The Lace Reader	Brunonia Barry
The Alienist	Caleb Carr
Star Island	Carl Hiaasen
The Box Garden	Carol Shields
Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang	Chelsea Handler
Born to Run	Christopher McDougall
No Country for Old Men	Cormac McCarthy
The Road	Cormac McCarthy
Prep	Curtis Sittenfeld
The Da Vinci Code	Dan Brown
The Lost Symbol	Dan Brown
Drive	Daniel H. Pink
What Is the What	Dave Eggers
Zeitoun	Dave Eggers
Cloud Atlas	David Mitchell
One Day	David Nicholls
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle	David Wroblewski
Muhammad	Deepak Chopra
Gone, Baby, Gone	Dennis Lehane
Mystic River	Dennis Lehane
Shutter Island	Dennis Lehane
How to Read the Air	Dinaw Mengestu
Coming Back Stronger	Drew Brees, Chris Fabry, Mark Brunell
The Known World	Edward P. Jones
Committed	Elizabeth Gilbert
Killshot	Elmore Leonard
The Devil in the White City	Erik Larson
Let's Take the Long Way Home	Gail Caldwell
The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head	Gary Small, Gigi Vorgan
Displaced Persons	Ghita Schwarz
Three Cups of Tea	Greg Mortenson
The Fall	Guillermo del Toro, Chuck Hogan
Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat	Hal Herzog
Tell No One	Harlan Coben
Bad Things Happen	Harry Dolan
The Weather of the Future	Heidi Cullen
Atonement	Ian McEwan
Even Silence Has an End	Ingrid Betancourt
Suite Francaise	Irene Nemirovsky
The Warmth of Other Suns	Isabel Wilkerson
Shogun	James Clavell
The Last of the Mohicans	James Fenimore Cooper
A Million Little Pieces	James Frey
Don't Blink	James Patterson, Howard Roughan
Darkly Dreaming Dexter	Jeff Lindsay
Dexter Is Delicious	Jeff Lindsay
The Lost Dogs	Jim Gorant
The Year of Magical Thinking	Joan Didion
Bangkok 8	John Burdett
A Time to Kill	John Grisham
The Grapes of Wrath	John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men	John Steinbeck
Through Black Spruce	Joseph Boyden
Heart of Darkness	Joseph Conrad
Netherland	Joseph O'Neill
The Good Daughters	Joyce Maynard
The Widower's Tale	Julia Glass
The Passage	Justin Cronin
Sh*t My Dad Says	Justin Halpern
The Help	Kathryn Stockett
Fall of Giants	Ken Follett
I'd Know You Anywhere	Laura Lippman
What the Dead Know	Laura Lippman
Outliers	Malcolm Gladwell
Moral Disorder and Other Stories	Margaret Atwood
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	Mark Haddon
The Gendarme	Mark T. Mustian
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer	Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings	Maya Angelou
Dirty Sexy Politics	Meghan McCain
The Murder Room	Michael Capuzzo
Pirate Latitudes	Michael Crichton
Anil's Ghost	Michael Ondaatje
The Omnivore's Dilemma	Michael Pollan
Have a Little Faith	Mitch Albom
Cathedral	Nelson DeMille
The Charm School	Nelson DeMille
Safe Haven	Nicholas Sparks
Bed of Roses	Nora Roberts
Savor the Moment	Nora Roberts
Vision In White	Nora Roberts
Blood of the Prodigal	P. L. Gaus
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks	Rebecca Skloot
Native Son	Richard Wright
The Disappearing Spoon	Sam Kean
Ape House	Sara Gruen
Body Work	Sara Paretsky
Man in the Woods	Scott Spencer
Bob Dylan In America	Sean Wilentz
WAR	Sebastian Junger
Adam & Eve	Sena Jeter Naslund
Salvation City	Sigrid Nunez
The Hound of the Baskervilles	Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Truth-Teller's Lie	Sophie Hannah
Mini-Shopaholic	Sophie Kinsella
The Grand Design	Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow
Carrie	Stephen King
The Dead Zone	Stephen King
It	Stephen King
The Shining	Stephen King
The Stand	Stephen King
Freakonomics	Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
SuperFreakonomics	Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest	Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Played with Fire	Stieg Larsson
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo	Stieg Larsson
"U" is for Undertow	Sue Grafton
Stiltsville	Susanna Daniel
Getting to Happy	Terry McMillan
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter	Tom Franklin
C	Tom McCarthy
Child 44	Tom Rob Smith
The Bluest Eye	Toni Morrison
A Journey	Tony Blair
In Cold Blood	Truman Capote
The Jungle	Upton Sinclair
Beatrice and Virgil	Yann Martel

Remember that we are looking to have a "soft" opening for this collection, which we were able to begin collecting almost three months ahead of schedule thanks to the end of our contract with Recorded Books. The collection will begin small, but grow significantly, especially as we approach January. We ask that you refrain from pushing the collection to your public until January 2011, instead letting your patrons discover the collection, or steering patrons who ask about ebooks in particular to the collection.

ALA releases E-books Map

This morning, the American Library Association released this interesting map, looking at the coverage of access to e-books through libraries in the US:


I was actually surprised to see that 22% of Vermont libraries who responded reported having access for patrons to e-books; this still places us in third-to-last in the country for coverage, with only New Mexico and Iowa behind, and well below the nearly 66% average nationwide.

As this format continues to be talked about in the media, patron demand for access and patron questions about the format will only grow. E-books are in the process of being added to our OverDrive collection at http://www.listenupvermont.org, with hundreds of titles already on order and the format part of our collection development plan for 2011. The fee listed on your 2011 Membership Agreement includes access to not only our downloadable audio collection for your library's patrons, but also our e-book collection, a very important piece of information for your Director or membership contact to keep in mind.

The map, including links to the data, is available at http://www.ala.org/ala/research/initiatives/plftas/2009_2010/ebooksmap0910.cfm.

Membership Agreement Link

Having trouble accessing our 2011 Membership Agreement form? The link is:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dEh1Vk9WZWpvSERWTWd4U255MWJJUmc6MQ

Membership Mailings Completed

All libraries should have received by now their 2011 Membership Agreement for participation in the Green Mountain Library Consortium. As outlined in your agreement, your annual fee comes with the following benefits:

• access to Listen Up! Vermont, the statewide downloadable audio and e-book service at a much lower per title cost than if individually purchased;
• access to discounts for programs and services procured by the GMLC;
• the ability to participate in vokal, the Vermont Organization of Koha Automated Libraries project, including the ability to access the consortium catalog currently in development -- additional vokal fees apply;
• the ability to suggest and participate in incubator projects for library expansion of services;
• continuing education on consortium endeavors with networking opportunities;
• ongoing communication on tips, tricks, and opportunities connected with consortium projects;
• working alongside very cool people.

If you received your agreement and are having trouble with the form, please visit https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dEh1Vk9WZWpvSERW TWd4U255MWJJUmc6MQ; if your library has not received a Membership Agreement, please contact Stephanie Chase at schase[at]stowelibrary.org.

Membership Agreement mailings begin

Member libraries whose library names begin with the letters A through C should have received their 2011 Membership Agreement via email today. The agreement will be an attachment to the email, and is a PDF.

Over the next few days, I will continue to send out the 2011 Membership Agreements -- I've got quite a lot on my plate, so you will have to forgive me for the length of time it might take to get them all out as I finish up my last projects for the GMLC.

Member libraries A to C who did not receive an agreement, please check your spam folders and, if it is not there, send me an email at schase[at]stowelibrary.org. If it is likely that you have given us a VALS email as your contact email, please give us a non-VALS email to resend the agreement to.

Membership Agreements are due by Wednesday, December 1. All libraries who have not notified the GMLC of their status at that time by visiting the Google form set up for agreements will automatically be renewed, and subject to the conditions in the 2011 agreement.

Thanks!

New & Popular Titles Added in October

Adam & Eve	Sena Jeter Naslund
At Home	Bill Bryson
Bob Dylan in America	Sean Wilentz
By Nightfall	Michael Cunningham
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter	Tom Franklin
Decision Points	George W. Bush
Fall of Giants	Ken Follett
Freedom	Jonathan Franzen
Getting to Happy	Terry McMillan
The Grand Design	Stephen Hawking
The Hiding Place	Corrie Ten Boom
A Journey	Tony Blair
Juliet	Anne Fortier
Man in the Woods	Scott Spencer
My Reading Life	Pat Conroy
Of Love and Evil	Anne Rice
Packing for Mars	Mary Roach
Room	Emma Donoghue
Sh*t My Dad Says	Justin Halpern
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk	David Sedaris
Star Island	Carl Hiaasen
The Tenth Parallel	Eliza Griswold
To the End of the Land	David Grossman
The Wave	Susan Casey
The Widower's Tale	Julia Glass

Bookmarks & Posters

Listen Up! Vermont libraries: if you need posters for your library or community, we have LOTS available. Bookmarks are starting to run out; we will have a new batch by January, which we hope will continue to feature our beloved cows, this time, perhaps, with an e-reader as well!

If you need posters and/or bookmarks, please contact Kip Roberson at the Pierson Library in Shelburne at kroberson[at]shelburnevt.org. You will need to send along postage for Kip, in stamps, either $4.95 for a small flat rate envelope or $10.70 for the medium flat rate box. Stephanie in Stowe is all out of bookmarks, but does, for the time being, have posters.