Info on Follett eBooks

1.       Because a school purchases eBooks and not leases them, there is no subscription fees, no cost to access them and the terms of use cannot change from year to year.  Just pay one time for only the books that you want.   As a librarian, I purchased eBooks from Follett over 5 years ago and now these can be access on more devices and have more features then when I originally bought them.  My former library gets all this, with no other fees since then.

2.    2.    We also have a free online school digital manager called FollettShelf for any school that purchases eBooks from us.  Students can login and access the ebooks from here.  You can also have the MARC records and access them through your library system.

3.       3. We now have over 100,000 eBooks, over 10,000 Unlimited Simultaneously Accessed eBooks and other items.  These can be accessed through our free FollettShelf Online Catalog or through your catalog via a MARC record. 

4.      3.  We have an app for both the iPad and Android.   Any books that you have purchased in the past as well as in the future can utilize this.* Users can move books from being checkout online that can be accessed anywhere to download on the tablet for offline use.

* The rights to the eBooks are determined by the publisher.  The good thing is that these rights are locked in when the eBook is ordered.  Speaking of that, make sure that you look at the title details on Titlewave to see if the rights/ways of access meet your needs.  Here are some comments on these

1.       Full-featured Online Reader: Our Follett Reader with advanced tools, including keyword search, dictionary, note taking, highlighting, and bookmarking (Adobe Flash® 10.0 plug-in required).

Pretty much all books have this.  If students log in with their account on FollettShelf and accesses the book, it will save all their notes, highlights and bookmarks so that when they accessed the book again, they can use these.

2.       Basic Online Reader: HTML Reader with all of the standard features, including keyword search and dictionary.

All books have this.  This is to deal with non-Flash products (iPad and iPhone specifically).  The link to the eBook will check for Flash and if not available will ask if one wants to read it with this non-Flash reader.  When the app comes out for the iPad, this will not be needed.  However, you would still need this on the iPhone. (This too will be addressed in the future.)

3.       Offline Reader: Download our stand-alone Follett Reader with advanced tools, including keyword search, dictionary, note taking, highlighting, and bookmarking (Adobe Flash® 10.0 plug-in required).

Most books have this (USA does not).  If reading offline is a need with the book, make sure this is listed.  A vast majority of users opt for reading online rather than downloading the book to a computer.

4.       Also, when you preview the eBook in Titlewave, please click on the Information button at the top.  This will tell you how much can be printed, copied and if read aloud is an option.   The copying will copy the text but the printing will print exactly how the page appears with graphics.  Even if copying is not available, if you select a section of text and right click to make a note, when you print the note, the selected text will print as well.

5.    4.    Individual titles can be ordered and you have a full preview of each.  We do have bundles of eBooks that is mostly as a help to librarians who want assistance in choosing eBooks and those titles can also be ordered individually.  

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