South Texas Group Enhances its e-book Offerings through Total Boox

Tom West was looking around for e-book alternatives.

West serves as the Adult Programs Coordinator for the Brazoria County Library System, a consortium of 13 public libraries and a museum located near the Texas Gulf Coast south of Houston. Looking to keep up with an increasing patron appetite for e-books, the group had experimented with various products and found them not quite what was needed. They were in the process of leaving their existing e-book vendor and moving whatever content they could somewhere else – and determining where that somewhere might be – when West came across a demo for Total Boox, an Amigos vendor partner. "I was sold on it," he said.

Total Boox is an eBook service that gives library patrons unlimited simultaneous use of thousands of titles, while making library budgets go further. Over 30,000 titles are available for instant download, access never expires, and the library pays only for the content read.

What was it about Total Boox that West liked? "Total Boox is one of the best values I have come across for e-books," West explained, noting that the main reason for the group jumping on board was the extent of the professional and technical titles from Elsevier Science that were available. "These are expensive, and the one copy/one user model that our previous vendor used was not cost-effective, West noted. “Being able to provide access to all the titles available, but only having to pay for the actual pages read was a dream come true." West said patrons love being able to download as many books as they want. "And when we tell them the library only pays when they actually read the book, they are thrilled that it is not costing us up front."

Total Boox will be hosting two webinars for Amigos members on Tuesday, July 14, at 12:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. CDT. West will join Total Boox founder and CEO Yoav Lorch and Vice President of Library Services Peyton Stafford for the presentations. As an added bonus, Amigos members who attend one of the webinars will be eligible to receive a 25% discount on the one-time setup fee.

For more information about the Total Boox program available through Amigos, or to register for one of these webinars, contact Liz Wardlaw, wardlaw@amigos.org or 800-843-8482, ext. 2802.