3M Cloud Library Goes Live at St Paul Public Library

[tubemonkey]

Growing pains. I hope they get it worked out. We need some healthy competition in library providers.

[Joykins]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Growing pains. I hope they get it worked out. We need some healthy competition in library providers.

Since Penguin has withdrawn from OverDrive, it occurs to me that *which* ebooks you have access to is going to depend on where you live, which doesn't strike me as a reader-friendly way of doing competition. Does anyone know what publishers are available on 3M?

[AnemicOak]

I wonder if we will see more libraries following Douglas County, Colorado and setting up their own content servers with their own books instead of paying OverDrive & 3M.

The staff at the Douglas County Libraries in Colorado have been implementing for the past year an innovative ebook lending model that gives the library actual ownership of the ebook file, rather than leasing access to it via a third party. The library has its own content server and after striking deals with various publishers it loads the files onto the server and applies the requisite DRM before lending. The library is providing a concrete example of how in the digital age libraries remain reliable stewards of intellectual content.

http://www.libraries.wright.edu/nosh...book-solution/

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Joykins

Since Penguin has withdrawn from OverDrive, it occurs to me that *which* ebooks you have access to is going to depend on where you live, which doesn't strike me as a reader-friendly way of doing competition. Does anyone know what publishers are available on 3M?

It's just a matter of time as more libraries sign up.

They recently signed more deals, but I have no idea who the "more than 40 major publishers" are.

3M Library Systems will feature its growing list of offerings for the 3M Cloud Library eBook Lending Service at Book Expo America 2012, to be held June 4-7 at the Javits Center in New York City. Visitors to the 3M Library Systems booth, DZ2417, will learn about 3M Cloud Library’s new partnerships with INscribe Digital, Smashwords, The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group and the National Book Network (NBN) which are increasing the eBook system’s total list of offerings to more than 200,000 titles from over 300 publishers.

>snip<

These collections add more than 100,000 titles, significantly growing 3M Cloud Library’s total offerings. Combined with 3M Cloud Library’s existing relationships with more than 40 major publishers, these new partnerships help 3M Library Systems offer a broad variety of content from both new and established authors.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

I wonder if we will see more libraries following Douglas County, Colorado and setting up their own content servers with their own books instead of paying OverDrive & 3M.

I hope so. That's another way to augment their collections. Diversification, instead of having all your eggs in one basket.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Joykins

Does anyone know what publishers are available on 3M?

Random House
Harper Collins
Harlequin
Baker Publishing Group
Wiley
Kensington
Sourcebooks
Workman

ABC-CLIO
AFCHRON
Berrett-Koehler
Creative Content Digital
F+W Media
Gibbs-Smith
Holiday House
IPG
Llyewellyn
Loyola Press
Lukeman Literary Agency
McFarland Publishers
Naxos
Paradigm Publishers
Red Wheel Weiser
Quayside
Skyhorse
University of Mississippi

http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3...ry/Publishers/



They've also recently added...
Smashwords
INscribe
Rowman & Littlefield
NBN

http://news.3m.com/press-release/com...tent-offerings

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3...ry/Publishers/

Thanks for the list. That's 26; I wonder who the other 14+ are that they alluded to in their press release. Possibly imprints of those listed?

[Ed_Grey]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Growing pains. I hope they get it worked out.

3M is using library patrons as free testers instead of paying for real QA.

[Ed_Grey]

I'll put in a plug for Distributed Proofreaders (pgdp.net), who use online volunteers (including me and anyone who signs up) to publish public domain e-books. That's where Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org) gets most of its books.

I'll also put in a good word for archive.org, which has optical scans of a lot of public domain texts, as well as music, film, video, and archived earlier versions of websites.

I favor libraries having their own ebook service, and especially offering the best books for self-education and research, and not getting cluttered with the formulaic read-one-and-you've read-them-all Harlequins and whatever. There are a lot of great books that are hard to get. There's no problem getting bestsellers.

[Soldim]

Originally Posted by Ed_Grey

I'll put in a plug for Distributed Proofreaders (pgdp.net), who use online volunteers (including me and anyone who signs up) to publish public domain e-books. That's where Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org) gets most of its books.

I am also a PGDP & PG fan, they provide great reading material of sometimes surprising quality. It seems quite a few of the books here on MR originally come from them.

[Ed_Grey]

A new, odd error:

"The requested eBook is currently not available on the server. Please try again after sometime."

And now I have about a half dozen books chronically "Available in less than 1 day."

[Ed_Grey]

An even odder error -

I opened Book A and got instead Book B. So I closed it, returned Book B, and then tried opening Book A again. I still got book B. I tested my copy of Book A by opening it directly with Adobe Digital Editions. That worked fine.

I then returned Book A and checked it out again. Now I got Book A when I opened Book A.

The beta version from this past March is still the only version of the 3M software available for download.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

You can download to ereaders. I think cloud just refers to where the master files are stored.

I think "cloud" was just added to pass the buzzword requirements.

[dkperez]

Well, the 3m Cloud's been up for 8 MONTHS now. Is anyone else using it? Successfully?

I ran my 109 books on my wish list through the search yesterday. It found ONE......... Out of 109.

Even better, it crashes every time it's restarted. If I uninstall it, then reinstall it, I can run it ONCE... After that it never even starts... Crashes in QtGui4.dll.

Unfortunately, even if you DO find a book in there, and reserve it, the thing has NO capability to let you know when the book's available. You have to go back in every couple days and check... Which takes us back to the previous paragraph... the constant crashing.

I sure hope they do some heavy rewriting, content gathering, and improvements really soon.

[Ed_Grey]

My experience with 3M Cloud isn't as bad as yours, and it got somewhat better after they updated to the August 30 version. Still not ready for prime time, still not as good as Overdrive, which doesn't crash (though occasionally the server is down) and sends you a notice when a book is ready.

I discovered that you can get some access through the Web also:
http://ebook.3m.com/library/en/patrons/

Since it's on a browser, it's not as awkward and bug-prone as their own software. It lets me check out books, but not download them. (They show up in the regular cloud software, and they download there when you choose READ.) You can open multiple windows and do more than one search at a time. Sometimes it will make the regular Cloud software fail when you start it - I found that uninstalling and reinstalling the software fixes that. Sometimes it will also cause removal of the ebooks, so they reload when you open the regular software and try to read them. You're probably better off reading them in Adobe Digital Editions or with an ebook reader.

So, this stuff is still beta as far as I'm concerned, and it adds to 3M's reputation for producing less-than-professional software. For crying out loud, the Calibre freeware ebook reader for PC and MAc produces multiple updates in any given month!