Amigos eShelf℠ Service: great seeing everyone at PLA!

Thank you to everyone who stopped by our booth during the recent Public Library Association conference. We enjoyed seeing and talking with each of you.

This was a milestone for the Amigos eShelf℠ Service. While we provided information about Amigos as a whole at the conference, our focus was on the e-book service. Before the conference, we emailed an invitation to registrants encouraging them to stop by our booth to find out about the service. This went very well. In addition to chatting with our own members, we also talked to many libraries that were not Amigos members and more that were not from our traditional region.

We found out that there is a lot of interest in the type of platform we have developed. Items of most interest to PLA attendees were:

  • Availability of Interlibrary loan across most of our publishers.
  • Librarians choosing where patrons can browse for e-books: ILS, a discovery service, and/or the website for just Amigos eShelf℠ Service e-books.
  • Making the content primary and the platform secondary by helping libraries move e-books purchased through us to other platforms. Soon we will be able to host e-books moved from other platforms to ours.
  • Low barrier to entry and low ongoing costs.

Our next major conference will be next week's Texas Library Association conference in Houston. We encourage interested attendees to contact Christine Peterson to set up a meeting during TLA or just stop by our booth to discuss whether the Amigos eShelf℠ Service would be a good fit for your library.

If you are interested in keeping up with this service – new publishers, new functionality, or events – send us a message at eshelf@amigos.org.