You never know where a blog posting will end up — on the back of my praise for Libraries NI making available e-books for loan via the Overdrive mobile application, I was asked to participate in a discussion on BBC Radio Ulster’s Saturday Magazine programme, presented by John Toal.
The panel included Helen Osborn (Director of Service Delivery, Libraries NI), author John Bradbury and yours truly.
Helen argued that this service has the potential to increase the number of new users, as well as adding value to the many reasons why current users go to their library.
John prefers the tactility of a printed book, and to browse his books physically, while I argued that I used to be this way with my music, but now enjoy the convenience of having a large library available to me anytime, electronically.
I did confess that I had to get over the irrelevance of page numbering in e-books, but this took me two minutes and I don’t think about it anymore.
But for me the most important point wasn’t weather you read a printed book or e-book, but that this additional service by Libraries NI should encourage more reading, in itself.
Our 15-minute conversation went very quickly. We all could have easily talked about this topic for much longer!
