BiblioBoard, an app and e-publishing platform focused on libraries that gives them the ability to loan a wide variety of e-book content to patrons, announced that it added more than 370 publishers to its content pool in the last quarter of 2013. BibiloBoards now offers access to more than 125,000 e-books.
BiblioBoard announced the new content deals in advance of the American Library Association Mid-winter meeting this weekend in Philadelphia. The content is being offered through BiblioBoard’s PatronFirst program, a mobile app and content library aimed at supplying digital content to libraries for loan. The BiblioBoard app is designed to support ReadersFirst, a national program organized by librarians to ensure their patrons have access to e-books. Biblioboard’s PatronsFirst program features “in-demand” content licensed from publishers to offer to the libraries for a fee. BiblioBoard has also launched a pilot program with 51 libraries in the the Massachusetts Library System that gives participating libraries access to more than 30,000 e-books and other content for digital lending via the BiblioBoard app.
New content being offered via the program includes graphic novels for young adults and children from Blue Water Press, eigoMANGA, Arcana Studio and others, academic content from such university presses as the University of North Carolina Press and others, Spanish language content from more than 300 Spanish-language publishers, Common Core teaching modules, including the British Library Common Core Timelines and the BiblioBoard Common Core for middle schools, and more.
BiblioBoard app provides libraries with access to a large pool of content for a subscription fee and patrons get smooth consumer-oriented access to digital lending that operates much like other subscription e-book services. BiblioBoards chief business officer Mitchell Davis said the company’s PatronsFirst program offers a way around the long-runnnig conflict between libraries and publishers of e-book lending. “I just came back from Digital Book World, and publishers I talked with agree that mainstream adoption of digital libraries will ultimately be a positive factor in their long-term competitive roadmap,” Davis said. “All of the publishers we work with have licensed content under terms that allow a seamless user-experience. That’s a game-changer.”
“We are working across the entire range of library systems worldwide,” Davis said. “We are a nimble software company, and our DNA is to create great patron user-experiences across all devices and keep those products ahead of the market. All types of libraries and schools realize they are competing for the attention of patrons and students in a fast-moving mobile world. We solve digital user-experience issues for the library, which frees them to focus on their mission of being a conduit between content and community.”
