As the American Library Association’s annual conference kicks off later this week in Las Vegas, companies that support public and academic libraries will showcase their technology and roll out new offerings to the attendees. One of those companies, 3M Library Systems, will be unveiling a next generation app that provides a more personalized lending experience of digital content.
“The 3M Cloud Library app still allows libraries to create custom shelves to promote content to patrons. However, now users can personalize which genres they browse on a regular basis, allowing them to quickly find new content they are interested in,” said Tom Mercer, 3M Cloud Library Marketing Manager, in a press release. “The combination of both library and patron customization tools means we have the most flexible interface to create an intuitive and elegant experience for the library user. A great app experience creates happy patrons, which in turn means more circulation and more users for the library.”
Personalized lending experiences cannot come soon enough in a climate where libraries are struggling to remain relevant and to offer the same kind of user experience that patrons have come to expect in other industries. Of course, the real news is in the addition of a number of publishing partners, upping 3M’s catalog offering in order to help libraries provide their patrons with the content they want. These new partners include titles from Perseus Books Group, Penguin Random House‘s Spanish language books division, Encyclopaedia Britannnica, and several more. This addition increases 3M’s catalog of titles to over 300,000 ebooks.
“3M Cloud Library continues to secure content from publishing partners offering the titles patrons are most excited about,” said Mercer. “This quality-over-quantity approach helps libraries demonstrate the value of this powerful eReading tool.”
Good e-Reader will be on hand at the ALA conference to post features about the new projects and products that will be showcased at the event.
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.