Hi Clare, I can give you a lot of information about our kindle program, and since others requested this information, I am posting to the list.
We have not used Whispercast, but we found out that it is only for new accounts (so we can't use it as we have 6 kindles loaded with over 100 books).You have to buy one book per kindle, and that costs significantly more money. Educators are talking about this, of course, and I suggest you look at this recent post with the comments and see what you can glean from it: http://edukindle.ning.com/profiles/blogs/whispercast-changes-everything#comments Right now, we are allowing our 6 (old!) kindles to be checked out by patrons, and we are loading each book we purchase to all 6 kindles as that seems to be allowed by Amazon at this time, although it is sort of murky. We like to have more copies of the same book, particularly for our book groups. At this time, we have purchased a refillable American Express credit card that is attached to the Amazon account used to buy kindle books. Each book is purchased only by library staff and subtracted from the balance. There is the danger of patrons purchasing an item on their own, however it is possible to "de-authorize" the kindle from the account so that won't happen. Unfortunately, it is somewhat of a pain to do that. We have a user agreement that patrons need to sign that states that they will not buy books themselves. Whispercast is probably best used in a college or High school setting where they are buying dozens of kindles. It avoids the issue of patron purchasing by limiting the ability to purchase items from the kindle itself. As far as putting all the different types of books on different kindles-I would imagine that just having all of them on all the kindles would be much easier. We have created different "collections" within the kindles so people can browse easier, but this way, they know that if they check out a kindle, the book they want will be on it, and they can also enjoy looking at other possible titles that are loaded on them. If you have more than 6, it would make more sense to separate them by genre in groups of 6 kindles. At the conference in Houston, we will be talking practical matters about this and other things regarding e-books and cataloging them, etc, at a Wednesday session. Lisa Silverman Library Director Sinai Temple Blumenthal Library 10400 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90024 310-481-3215 From: hasafran-boun...@lists.service.ohio-state.edu [mailto:hasafran-boun...@lists.service.ohio-state.edu] On Behalf Of Temple Beth Emeth Library Sent: Monday, March 04, 2013 1:06 PM To: Hasafran@lists.service.ohio-state.edu Subject: [ha-Safran] recent experiences with e readers Hi all, I'm writing a proposal for buying and loading e-readers for our library. I've read through the past discussions, but I'm wondering if anyone has recent comments to add. It looks like Amazon is now offering a whispercast program https://whispercast.amazon.com/ that allows an administrator/librarian to control all of the content on the kindles (and without having to put any credit card info on the device). Has anyone here used whispercast yet? I'm thinking of trying putting different types of books on different kindles...a couple with children's books (to lend to parents!), a couple with teen books, a couple with new fiction and biography, and maybe a couple with classic texts. But I really want to build on others experiences. You can respond to the list, or just to me at tbe_libr...@templebethemeth.org<mailto:tbe_libr...@templebethemeth.org> Thanks! Clare Kinberg
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