Did you purchase the screen protectors for each nook?
We purchased protective covers; we did not purchase the screen protectors. We also purchased 2 year warranties for every device.
I am guessing that since you are using the “digital locker” that you now purchasing one book per nook. Is that correct? If so, are you finding the need to purchase multiple copies of certain titles for different nooks?
The policy is indeed now 1:1; we will purchase multiple copies of popular titles or titles that will be virtual class sets. My plan is to purchase 5 copies of each ebook so that it will be easier to know off the top of my head which collection/subcollection I’ve assigned those books to (see section below on setting up collections/subcollections).
By having Barnes and Noble “control” your Nooks, were you given any type of password/user email for each nook or does Barnes and Noble have total control?
You work with Barnes and Noble to establish the user name/email and password, and they help you manage the content that goes on there from the backend. I’m having the ability to purchase content from the device directly disabled.
That question leads me to another that my Barnes and Noble rep was not able to answer… If my nooks are “digitally locked”, can I lend ebooks to other nooks? And can a student “check-out” ebooks from the Public Library onto a school owned nook? My Rep’s answer was yes, but when I asked her how, she began to falter. It is my understanding that it would not work, but now I am unsure. What has been your findings?
A. By “lend the ebooks”, what exactly do you mean? If you mean through your OPAC, no.
B. I assume you mean through Overdrive? I would say yes: http://www.sjpl.org/blog/nook-basics . Once we get ours, I will test it out and confirm.
When purchasing ebooks for the nook through their management program, can you clarify which nook to load a certain ebook?
Yes—you tell them what book goes on which device. You will work with them to set up groups/subgroups or “Collection” and “subcollections” of your devices. I have set up the following collections and subcollections:
Collections: 1. Classroom Sets 2. Circulation Sets
Classroom Set Subgroups:
- Classroom Set Group A Nooks 1-5
- Classroom Set Group B Nooks 6-10
- Classroom Set Group C Nooks 11-15
- Classroom Set Group D Nooks 16-20
- Classroom Set Group E Nooks 21-25
- Classroom Set Group F Nooks 26-30
- Classroom Set Group G Nooks 31-35
For the circulation set….
- Circulation Nooks 36-40
- Circulation Nooks 41-45
- Circulation Nooks 46-50
If at a later date, could you remove a nook from the Digital Locker and gain control total control of it again?
“Yes” but only if you deregister and reregister the device. However, I am not sure why you would want to do this—how else would you manage or add content without doing it locally, which is more cumbersome?
How are you checking out the eBooks?
We will not catalog the ebooks into the OPAC because there is no way of actually circulating or physically/electronically checking out individual Nook books through Destiny at this time. We will circulate the devices and keep track of what books are on each device; we will maintain this information in a spreadsheet that will be available online and in a hard copy the students can easily browse.
Will you be documenting the Nook program at your library?
Yes–the website is housed here. We’ll be filling in content in the upcoming months!
The Unquiet Librarian 
great post. very informative!
just wanted to comment on the cataloging/circulating of ebooks in Destiny (the OPAC).
we can, in fact, add ebooks to Destiny (in v9.9 at least). i just duplicate the record for the print book and change the material type from book (monograph) to electronic book (ebook). i do the same thing for audiobooks. i duplicate the record for a cassette or cd audiobook, leave the material type as sound recording (non-muscial), and i add the subtype MP3. that way, when students search for titles in Destiny, they see all available formats in 1 place: http://www.flickr.com/photos/msannakoval/6139094842/in/photostream
when i add copies, i give these ebooks and audiobooks special call #s: EB for ebooks and MP3 for digital audiobooks. (i keep a google doc of the barcode #s i assign because there’s no where to slap on a sticker!) that way i can see with a couple of clicks (in reports>library>collection statistics summary) how much use that material type gets.
i’ve made copy categories of our ebooks & audiobooks in destiny, but because that’s not the first place students browse, i use a google spreadsheet for my title list. i save that spreadsheet as a PDF and upload it to scribd.com. then i copy the embed code and put that scribd doc on my website: http://www.bighouselibrary.com/audiobooks.html.
if we add the ebooks/audiobooks to Destiny in this way, we can circulate them. although, i admit, it is “one more thing to do.” for teacher-librarians with multiple sites and no assistants, i get that this might not be realistic.
for me, it is imperative that i track what i circ — however time-consuming it is. it is my way of documenting for my town’s taxpayers how i spend their bond measure money and justifying for my administration how i allocate my budget. in this economy, in my district, data drives decision-making and current use determines/ensures continued/additional allocations for innovative programs like ebook readers.
buffy, in ebooks, as always, you are our pace car. thank you for trailblazing this for us. i hope my comments contribute positively to the conversation.
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Hi Anna!
Thank you so much for your great comments and helpful info!
The primary reason we are not cataloging the ebooks is because we do not have rights to edit our MARC records. As you can imagine, it becomes problematic.
The other challenge we encountered was that we had up to 50-60 titles on our Kindles—it just would not be practical or accurate to check out every single title even if we had the ability to do so. Is that how are you handling your ebook circulations?
I’m looking forward to seeing you in Atlanta in two weeks!
Best,
Buffy
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Buffy,
I also did not want to create ebook MARC records for each title pre-loaded onto our Kindles. However, I did want an easy way for the students to browse the different titles available on each Kindle. I simply set up public resource lists in Destiny (Kindle 1, Kindle 2, etc.). The resource lists are populated with MARCs for the print copies, but the kids don’t care….they just want to know what titles are on the Kindles. Then they tell us which Kindle they want, and we check the device out to them. Just a suggestion in return for all the help your blog and site have been to me as I established our Kindle program.
Thanks,
Christie
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Hi Christie! We might try that route in the future–right now with no clerical help and the entire instructional load on my back again this year, I’m not able to take care of those finer details, but I love your suggestion! That is a great work-around! Thank you!
Buffy
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I create a Marc record for a “collection” of devices — in my case it is one Marc record with six kindles attached as copies with barcodes, all containing the same 70-odd titles, and then a second Marc record with two kindles attached as copies with a different set of titles. I edit those Marc records to add the information for each title on the kindle (adding 505, 700 and 740 fields) so that if a student searches our catalog for a certain author or title, the corresponding kindle record will come up so the student knows they could check out the kindle if all the copies of the book are checked out. That way I still get circulation data every time a kindle is checked out. I can’t see using marc ebook records for each of the titles on the kindle, because how would I know which book(s) the person read? Plus how do you inventory your fake copies, manage holds, etc? Sounds like more trouble than it’s worth!
~ Susan Timmons
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Susan–is your comment directed toward Anna or me?
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Have you been able to establish a way to quickly purchase and add books to your digital lockers? I had a conference call with B&N local rep as well as someone from corporate about the Total Care Program. Although the gift card was a pain to set up initially, it served our high school students very well to be able to load books on the fly whenever there was a demand. For example, I just had a visually impaired student request a book so that it could be read to her on the Nook. With the Total Care program, I would have to process a purchase order (which is costly for one book and takes about a week to get through our internal system) and then wait for them to load the book for us. This is not convenient and responsive to student needs. Also, I wasn’t happy about not being able to at least log in to my account online and view my purchases. They told me they would keep track of it on a spreadsheet. This seems archaic. Your thoughts?
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We are just now starting to purchase ebooks, so I can’t speak just yet to the speed, but we will be using purchase orders only. As we move into this phase of purchasing ebooks, I will update you all here on how that process is flowing.
Best,
Buffy
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Thanks for all the info you put out there for all of us as we forage through new changes. I told the corporate B&N rep. that they should allow us to give them an open purchase order – do not exceed amount – and then just add titles to lockers as we need them. She didn’t like that idea because it’s so much work on their end – even though that gets us past the logistics of our purchase order system. I’m a little concerned that she wouldn’t definitively tell me that they wouldn’t charge us in the future for this program.
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Buffy, I don’t know if this will help anyone. We introduced 10 NOOKs into circulation at our library (public) the first week in July. We were absolute novices and so were our BN reps. We had 10 NOOKs set back for “training”. When we set up the NOOKs, we had 4 email accounts with 5 devices each. We added books to 10 of the NOOKs. They were added to catalog as NOOK #1, #2, etc. Each NOOK listing in the catalog had the books that were purchased for it listed. Again, we were novices, so we were a bit surprised when some of the NOOKs had 40+ titles instead of the 12+ titles we had purchased. The extra titles were from the “synced” devices (5 devices sharing the same email). At first we were a little upset, but it has actually turned out to be a good thing. Our hold list for these NOOKs is huge and we ended up buying 10 more and putting our training NOOKs into circulation.
I hope this isn’t too confusing. The “syncing” of device titles allows us to substitute available NOOKs for those on HOLD because they display the same books.
So far the NOOK lending has been a good experience.
Cindra
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I’ve been preparing for Nook circulation for 2 months now and I’ve learned a few things. I’m using Nook Colors, which will soon be updated on Nov 7th, so definitely wait to buy them if you’re thinking about it.
There has been a lot of confusion regarding the managed account and one of the biggest disappointments has been that magazine subscriptions are not available for library accounts. This may change, and my community liaison from B&N is advocating for the addition of magazine subscriptions.
While the purchase of books has been delayed, I have started circulating the nooks. Students like them for surfing the Web and using some of the apps.
I have 6 Nooks for circulation, each with a different theme. There is a Manga Nook, a Celebrity/Entertainment Nook, a Sports Nook, a Science/Sci Fi Nook, among others. I have designed a reservation form in Google Docs that will allow individuals to reserve a particular Nook (or an Ipad). The form is both a way of reserving and discovering the different genres available.
My form is currently under wraps within my School’s Google Domain. Otherwise, I would provide a link. If anyone is interested, I can prepare a Jing Screencast to show you my method.
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Is there a way to have nook books act like a library book. Here is my situation. I would like to offer 25 nooks. I would like a student be able to turn in a book and then for me to give the book to another student without them swapping nooks. Is that possible? My local school rep is unable to answer this question.
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Are you using the Nooks with the B&N Digital Locker managed program or as individual consumer? You can’t actually “loan” the books, but you can move them from one device to another.
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I am in the process of purchasing Simple Touch Nooks for my middle school library. I’m wondering which covers you purchased for your Simple Touch Nooks — and are you satisfied with them. I’ve read mixed reviews on the plastic clasps that hold the Nook in the cover. I need something durable enough to survive middle schoolers!
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Hi! We bought this model–we are just now starting to circulate them, so it’s too soon to say, but they seem very sturdy.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/industriell-cover-in-storm/20093213?cm_re=_carousel-_-product6-_-9781616813833_image&ean=9781616813833
Best, Buffy
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We met in October 2011 to start the Nook purchase order program with our local B&N, and I am just now getting them out to the students!
I have read the various methods you are all using the catalog in Destiny. We just put the Nooks in as a device (Adventure Nook) and tagged the titles in the 500 tag. We also made display cards with the titles on the back. Since each of my 10 Nook SimpleTouches has from 10-25 ebooks, and each Nook is a genre, it seemed like a daunting task to catalog each ebook.
My problem right now is that B&N will not sent me a confirming email of the downloads. My purchasing department needs this in order to pay. I had to create 16 purchase orders, since I had to comply with the “no more that 13 line items” on each po rule. I am very frustrated, because our district technology and purchasing departments will not open this up to other librarians until this initial purchase is correct from purchase order to accounts payable. In the beginning the B&N store manager and district manager were very much into the plans, but now all I have is the local community relations manager and she is swamped all the time with other things going on at the store.
Help!
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Pat, give me a couple of days to come up for air (we’ve been slammed with classes in the library), and I will answer your questions/concerns here and via email. I also hope to have a new blog post with a new update up soon.
Best,
Buffy
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I’m looking for forms to use with the 25 NookColors I just purchased for our middle school/high school library. ie a form for parents and students to sign, how to know which books are in which Nook, and other management forms.
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I am also looking for agreement forms for parents and students to sign. I’m just getting started checking out Nooks in my middle school library. Thanks
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