First Reactions: Educators and Members Talk about the Bookshelf and Web Reader

You probably saw that Bookshare just released two new pieces of functionality, the Bookshelf and Web Reader. If you haven’t heard the news, our website has lots of information, including links to training, videos, and webinars. You can also read the announcement.

Both tools are going to make it quicker and easier to get books to Bookshare students, saving time and effort. The Bookshelf will help individual members organize their books.

Several educators and members have already tested and used the tools and have agreed to share their feedback. We encourage you to try the tools too! Here’s what they think:

Sheila Kelly said, “Utilizing Bookshelves simplifies the process for educators who want to provide multiple students with access to the same titles.”

According to Nora Bardi, “The Bookshelf will be very valuable. I can simply keep the Bookshelf current and students can independently get what they need.”

Donna Mayberry thought, “Personalized Bookshelves for each student will be very nice for assigned summer reading that is different for each school, and specific novels that will be read in language arts classes.”

Justin Kolbe shared that it was “super easy” to set up, and that he plans to “get all of the year’s reading material organized in one place for given students: ­textbooks, novels etc. It will be easy for teachers to organize the year’s reading list for multiple students at once, thus saving time.”

While some teachers plan to use Bookshelves to get books to students with individual memberships, other teachers think the Bookshelves will help them organize books so they can go back later and download them.

Jennifer Laurence added, “I love it so far!”

Several individual members have also tried the Bookshelf.

Dan Barrett said, “I often find books that will be nice to read later, but I don’t want to download them at that time and then have to remember where I put them. I also hate messy and overloaded folders. This way, my hard drive is lean and mean, while my library is BIG and BOLD. Opening a book with the Web Reader couldn’t be any better than it already is! In fact, the only way to improve it would be to give money away while a book is being downloaded. That’s how good the process is.”

Juanita O’Hara really likes the fact that she can “categorize books I want to download and read later so I don’t have to do searches as often, and creating specific bookshelves for things I may be researching are both very helpful.  I really like this concept!”