Digital Book Club
This is currently at the proposal stage and we are seeking participants to joining the pilot
This is a concept that will work provided we can encourage participation and achieve critical mass. The idea revolves around book lovers discussing books in the Slack #library channel. We may need to offer some support in using Slack, they’ll need an email address and it would also be good to have a Borrowbox account with Middlesbrough libraries for e-books (and audiobooks). The best device to engage with this will be a tablet. ( a smartphone at a push)
There are four possible types of activity I can think of at present. All this activity takes place in #the_library channel in Slack
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Author and Book recommendations
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Book reviews
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Monthly Book Club Video Conference (individual reading)
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Weekly Book Club Video Conference. (collaborative reading)
Item 1) speakers for itself. As for item 2) I’ve spoken to David Harrington (Boro Library service) about this and he suggests he could re-post reviews on the Library’s Facebook page. In which case the reviews should probably be of books available in Borrowbox. Item 3 is for folks to discuss books they are reading generally. David tells me that Middlesbrough Libraries have something like this in partnership with Redcar & Cleveland. It uses “Teams” which I’m not sure about for our participants but we could look at it. Perhaps this would replace item 3) or perhaps we can signpost our participants.
Finally, item 4) is the traditional book reading club but online. Members collectively decide to all read the same book and discuss the plots in a weekly online video conference. I’m not sure Borrowbox could supply every member with the same book so I’ve researched some resources of free books below (including audiobooks) It’s probably worth mentioning here https://www.goodreads.com/ which is a social platform for sharing your reading with friends in your social platforms - there’s an app for this too.
https://www.bookbub.com/ebook-deals/free-ebooks
https://reedsy.com/discovery/blog/free-ebooks
https://manybooks.net/https://manybooks.net/
https://play.google.com/store/books/collection/topselling_free