Feburary ebookworm show

The next eBookWorm discussion will be held on Thursday, February 19, 2004 from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. Central Time. Cynthia Orr, Collection Manager for the Cleveland Public Library is the featured guest. eBookWorm is sponsored by the Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center. Tom Peters of TAP Information Services is the show host. To participate, all you need are an Internet connection, sound card and speakers. To enter the online conference room, go to http://www.talkingcommunities.com/entrance.pl?31122688174
type your name, no password is necessary and click enter. A small software applet will download to your computer as you enter the room.

Cynthia Orr is Collection Manager for the Cleveland Public Library where the 2003 annual budget for library materials was over $10 million. Cindy has years of experience in the areas of collection development, public service and management. She was a co-founder of the web-based free Readers Advisory resource called BookBrowser, which was sold to Barnes & Noble.com in 2003.

April 7, 2003, marked the debut of another "first" for the Cleveland Public Library, along with the 26 other member libraries in the CLEVNET Consortium. On that Monday morning in April, the library rolled out its new eBook lending program. The program is the first of its kind in the library world.

Satisfied patrons have let the library know that they like the ability to carry eBooks along with them while traveling with their laptop or PDA, and find that it is convenient to be able to check out a book without physically visiting the library. In the first week of the service, more than 300 different patrons checked out more than 500 titles and placed another 200 titles on reserve. Some of the most popular books in the collection include fiction by Michael Crichton, Tim LaHaye, Barbara Delinsky, Neil Gaiman, Elmore Leonard and Tony Hillerman. The collection ranges from children's books, Cliff's Notes, business and computer titles, cookbooks and bestsellers.

The CLEVNET Digital Library Connection offers titles for both Adobe Reader and Palm Reader, with MobiPocket coming soon. No special hardware is needed to enjoy an eBook. Free software is available and requires a one-time download. To learn more about these formats or to download the reader software, please click on eBooks at the CPL web site: www.cpl.org.

Cindy Orr has spoken about book related topics at conferences and workshops of many different organizations, including the Ohio Library Council, the Public Library Association, the American Library Association, and BookExpo America. She teaches a class on Readers' Advisory Services for Kent State University's Graduate School of Library and Information Science. She was on the committee responsible for launching the first 24-hour-a-day 7-day-a-week live readers' advisory service on the Web, and helped launch an ebook project for public library patrons--the first such library service to make it possible to check out eBooks and read them offline on multiple platforms and devices.