Chief librarian honoured for e-book effort
Medicine Hat’s new chief librarian was recognized this past weekend with the Premier’s Public Service Award for a project that’s provided people access to hundreds of Alberta e-books.
“I was very proud that the team was recognized,” said Ken Feser of the recognition for the Read Alberta EBooks project, which he completed while working for Alberta Municipal Affairs prior to joining the MHPL as chief librarian earlier this year. “It wasn’t an easy project.”
The team developed a collection of almost 1,500 ebooks published by the Book Publishers’ Association of Alberta, which people can now access through their public library
“Everything from guide books to bird guides to fiction to non-fiction, a whole real variety of Alberta books, and it’s everything that publishers had that they could give us, it was the whole works,” said Feser.
The project was important for two reasons, said Feser, one being the content wasn’t available otherwise and it was relevant content for Albertans.
“Because we built the collection ourselves, we were able to improve on some of the ways that people access ebooks at public libraries,” he said, pointing to how licensing means some commercially available books can be checked out by only one person at a time.
“We thought we could do better than that, and in a lot of ways we feel like we did. We improved the means of access. It’s kind of libraries taking control of a little bit of the stuff they buy, and working directly with publishers and tearing down barriers that come between people and their ebooks.”
Feser called the recognition a “real wonderful crowning touch” to the 10 years he spent in the Alberta Public Service, prior to joining the MHPL.
“If I was ever going to get a swollen head about winning this award, seeing the zebra mussel sniffing dogs get an award after me kind of brought me back down to earth,” he added with a chuckle. “It wasn’t about me, it was about the team ... it was a real honour and an opportunity to be involved in the project.”