Fiona Marriott is the Principal Librarian Adult Services and Reader Development in Luton Cultural Services Trust since 1998. She studied at Leeds Metropolitan University (Leeds, UK) - BA (Hons) Library and Information Science - Chartered Member of CILIP since 1990.
 

Fiona has a great experience of literacy development work with the community, creating partnership working between formal education, the voluntary sector and local government, Experience of managing and promoting adult services and stock, including services for disabled customers. Also has experience of training and development of library staff, experience of setting up a Books on Prescription scheme, to help people access books and information to help combat depression and anxiety and audiobooks and ebooks. She is interested in: 

• The application of new technology to traditional library services
• Raising literacy standards throughout the community
• Bibilotherapy – books and reading as a way of improving mental healthIntroduction

Fiona Marriott came to our Children's Literacy Lab in Salamanca and shared with us her broad experience with ebooks lending system. 

"Being one of the first libraries to launch a new service is always a challenge and it means that you have few people to compare with or ask advice. It can be more expensive than “waiting and seeing” and it’s easy to make mistakes.
It is almost two years since we began working on the eBook project in Luton, and we are still learning - about new formats, downloading problems, Ereaders, staff training and marketing the service."

 

"The one thing that we have been sure of since the beginning is that at the end of our three year “experiment” the world of eBooks will have changed beyond recognition. We can however, share with you what we have learned on our journey!"

"The process works from start to finish. Customers can search for books, but to download they need to log on using their library card number and PIN number. The first time they use the service, they need to download some software, the Overdrive Media Console for audiobooks, and Adobe Digital Editions for ebooks. Once this is done the customer can download up to 10 books at a time and can choose their loan period, from 7, 14 or 21 days. The book is downloaded with a licence, which expires at the end of this period and “returns” the book to the library, so that they are available for other customers.

We only have one copy of most books, but customers add themselves to the waiting list and are notified when the book is returned."  

"Promoting such a new and innovative service is actually more difficult than you would imagine. You don’t have a physical “object” to display in libraries, and posters don’t work very well, as customers don’t really read them. We were unable to download from the website in our libraries, as the firewall prevents any downloading by customers or staff. We have had to think of new ways of promoting the service, and Overdrive has helped with..."

Read more about the Luton's Ebook lending system in the next file