Northern Ireland's libraries lent a
record number of e-books on Sunday.
Libraries NI marketing officer Julie Campbell said 446 books were downloaded
in a single day for reading on tablet computers and mobile devices.
The e-book service began three years ago this month, and the number of users
has been growing steadily.
During July 2011, the first month of the service, a total of 363 e-books were
downloaded. So far this month, users have downloaded 9,439 titles.
Ms Campbell said the daily download figure currently averages somewhere
between 200 and 300 e-books, and she is not sure why there was such a spike on
Sunday.
Libraries NI's annual e-book figures
2011/2012 - 18,279 downloads
2012/2013 - 48,212 downloads
2013/2014 - 91,895 downloads
"It's probably because it was raining," she said.
The
e-book service is available across Northern Ireland, and Ms Campbell said
there was no need to even leave the house to get started.
"You can go on the website to sign up there and then, and have an e-book
downloaded within 10 minutes - you don't have to go into a library," she said.
"It's really straightforward - you fill in a form, get a code number and then
you can download the software to your device."
She said there was no need to worry about having to pay library fines if you
forget to leave back the book as it is automatically deleted from your device
after three weeks.
"We've been trying to promote the service all summer and we're delighted by
the response," she said.
"Why pay for books when you can borrow them? A lot of people think the
library is just old books, but we've got lots of the new summer releases."
While e-books are growing in popularity, Ms Campbell said it did not spell
the end of the traditional library.
"I think there's still room for both - a lot of people still prefer to read
on paper, and we've got people who are borrowing books as well as using the
e-book service," she said.
Libraries NI's previous daily download record was set on 12 January this
year, when 442 e-books were borrowed by users of the service.
Ms Campbell said that was an unusually high figure and attributed the spike
to users getting new tablet computers and mobile devices as Christmas
presents.
Since the start of this year, the most popular genre for e-book borrowers in
Northern Ireland has been romantic fiction, followed by the work of crime
writers.
Source: bbc.com
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