At Temple University we have been
1) lending Kindles for about two years. A total of nearly a dozen devices I believe. Staff with credit cards buy books in advance to preload the devices and also buy books on demand from patrons. One must then de-register the Kindle from the Amazon account so that the borrower cannot buy more books willy-nilly against the credit card. Admittedly not ideal. Uptake is modest here. We lend them now for two weeks.
2) lending ipads for about 8 months. These are popular so we are ramping up from the initial pilot of 9 to about 2 dozen for this spring semester. These we lend for 7 days. They are preloaded with aps and ebooks.... We have had one user report an ipad snatching on the subway and with presentation of a police report we forgave the full replacement fee...
We also lend GPS devices, flip cameras, etc -- the web page on the program is at: http://guides.temple.edu/content.php?pid=276653&sid=2279612
I would caution that at both the Sacramento PL and Philadelphia Free Library, the national Federation for the Blind filed suits that resulted in those libraries backing off from lending only nooks or kindles which are not accessible. We have stopped buying Kindles as a result and will only buy ipads going forward. We will continue to lend the Kindles but are not adding more.
You may have improved response rates (and details) by getting someone to post the inquiry to lib-CircPlus if you have not done so already....
Jonathan LeBreton
Senior Associate University Librarian
Temple University Libraries
Paley M138, 1210 Polett Walk, Philadelphia PA 19122
voice: 215.204.8231
fax: 215.204.5201
mobile: 215.284.5070
email: [log in to unmask]
email: [log in to unmask]
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Forrest, Stuart
> Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2013 11:41 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [CODE4LIB] Electronic device circulation
>
> Sorry I just posted this with the wrong subject....Here it is corrected
>
> Hi All
>
> We are interested on supplying electronic devices for circulation, ie iPads, Nooks,
> Kindles etc. Are any of your libraries doing similar and what processes are you
> following to implement this?
>
> Stuart Forrest PhD, ACM Member
> Library Systems Specialist
> Beaufort County Library
> Beaufort
> SC 29902
> 843 255 6450
> [log in to unmask]
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