Benefits of E-Readers in County Libraries:

According to the National Association of Counties' publication, County News, county libraries are being benefited by the lending of e-readers.  Shelly Kilgas, the Director of Technology at Grand County Library in Colorado, states in the article that she finds e-books to be more cost efficient for libraries than books in print (Taylor, 2011).  Libraries that offer e-readers to their patrons are seeing an increase in their patronage. Frank Marin, head of audiovisual popular reading services at the Broward’s North Regional-Broward College Library, says in the County News article, “It makes books available to people in a new way, brings people into the library, and I think it’s part of how we adapt today to the changing times for libraries" (Taylor, 2011).  

As a result, for those libraries that offer e-readers, circulation is booming.  At the Arlington County Public Library in Virginia, at any one time 74 percent of their e-book collection was checked out, as compared to 20 percent for their print collections.  Also, borrowers of e-readers are generally considerate with the valuable piece of equipment, something that can not be said for many library books. Frank Marin states in the article that his library had seen no damage to their e-readers, and all of them were accounted for.  Shelly Kilgas said the same for her library (Taylor, 2011).

For now, most libraries are just focusing on e-books.  However e-readers also have the capability to read PDF files, in which case all sorts of documents can be read.  For the county library, this means that  county documents, such as board agendas could be made available for public access.  Also, e-readers would give libraries the capability of offering their own original content (Taylor, 2011).

Now, even though the e-reader has its benefits, the librarians in this article agree that bound books won't go extinct any time soon.  Frank Marin puts it this way: ...The reality is that most often these things exist side by side. The movie theaters didn’t go away when VCRs came along, and certainly we’re always going to have books.  I think there’ll be new ways of accessing them" (Taylor, 2011).  Nicely said, Frank.

Taylor, C. (2011). County libraries see benefits in lending e-readers. County News: The Voice of 

America's Counties, 43(1), Retrieved from http://www.naco.org/newsroom/countynews/Current           Issue/1-17-11/Pages/Countylibrariesseebenefitsinlendinge-readers.aspx