On Wednesday, September 17th, Grenoble launched BIBOOK, a new digital book rental service. Developed by De Marque, a company based in Quebec, BIBOOK offers 300 books to the readers of the city’s town libraries.
© Maïlys Medjadj – placegrenet.fr
Discovering the latest hip book on your tablet is now a reality in the capital of Isere. The town libraries in the city are launching a new digital service.
Following the footsteps of Montpellier and Aulnay-Sous-Bois, Grenoble is the third French city to join a larger project initiated in 2013 and financed by the Ministry of Culture and Communication, called PNB (Prêt National en Bibliothèque).
Grenoble engages in this ambitious program, set to seduce digital book lovers. In 2013, only 2,6% of the French population purchased at least one EBook, against 53% for paper books, according to a poll conducted by TNS Sofres for the Publishing Industry Monitoring Unit.
50 to 60 publishers
To ensure the success of the program, city libraries relied on the expertise of De Marque. The Canadian company specialized on this niche can already claim the development of the digital book platform for libraries throughout Quebec, pretnumerique.ca.
The choice of the company was officialized last January.
The BIBOOK interface also results from a fruitful collaboration with digital publishers Feedbooks, Grenoble based libraries Le Square and Dilicom, PNB’s technical operator.
© Bibliothèque municipale de Grenoble
Today, “50 to 60 publishers feed the data base with publications” explains Melanie Le Torrec, in charge of the Digital and Public Unit within town libraries in Grenoble. There, are featured among others, publishers such as Gallimard, Denoël, Le Seuil or Plon.
The idea behind BIBOOK is to offer readers the latest publications and to complement the existing offer in the stores.
An easy-to-use interface
Readers can access up to five EBooks at once over 28 days. Beyond that, the books are no longer available. For now, 300 titles are available to the public. There should be “1000 titles at the end of 2014” adds Melanie Le Torrec.
© Bibliothèque municipale de Grenoble
To enjoy the service, you are required to subscribe to the town library, create an account on MonGrenoble and link it to your library account. The reader then has 24 hours to download the title on a tablet, a smartphone or a computer.
The easy-to-use interface is designed to target large audiences and spread the digital book experience. A growing market still budding in France.
By Maïlys Medjadj
Translation by Cécile Boussier
