Masterton Sells Out

Today’s tour leg included a roadtrip up the east coast of the lower North Island to visit Greytown, Masterton and Upper Hutt.

Greytown

The  old town hall in Greytown has been converted into the community library; and what an amazing space it is.

The foyer space leading up to the library

The library from the mezzanine floor

Guy presents to a group of avid listeners

There were eight people at the session this morning, and the majority were well up with the play on ereaders and ebooks. One gentleman had thoroughly researched all the ereaders on the global market and had come along with a list of questions he was hoping we could answer.

There was also a woman who was an avid ebook fan and read ebooks on a Kindle, smartphone and ipod touch depending on where she was. For example she used her smartphone to read books while waiting in the queue at the bank, and enjoyed reading her Kindle outside as it was easy to read in bright sunshine (unlike the smartphone or ipod touch).

Another woman worked with children with Aspergers and Autism, some of whom had paper phobias, and she was hoping an ereader may overcome that and enable them to read. The ability to test several ereading devices was the biggest drawcard for all participants and resulted in indepth discussions and was claimed a resounding success.

Masterton

All squashed in

The Masterton session in the early afternoon attracted a sell out crowd of 25 people – the biggest yet!

The staff did a fabulous job in promoting the tour and their focus on the customer experience definitely shone through. Michelle and Jeremy were well prepared with handouts, additional ereaders and we appreciated the extra assistance in demonstrating and answering specific ereader queries with such a big group. Thank you both 🙂

Long shot

Clever library shot

I offered to present this session to give Guy a break as he had presented three highly engaging sessions on the trot. This group was the most interactive we had encountered with questions coming thick and fast throughout the session and there was much comparison between the Sony PRS-T1 and tablet devices during ‘play time’.

Masterton Library lacks space for running sessions like this but with an extension in the plans this will hopefully be rectified.

We’ll be back in Masterton again on Friday so the challenge now is to break their own attendance record!

Upper Hutt

The last session of the day was at Upper Hutt where Wendy Horne once again did a great job explaining epukapuka to a group that seemed to consist of more library staff (cleverly disguised) than customers. Unfortunately the camera battery was too low to take photos of the session but Wendy has videoed the session and I’ll add a link to it when it is available.

One customer at this session had done a lot of research on ereader technology and was impressed to learn that we had some Lonely Planet travel guides in the collection. Shane helped him navigate to these through a variety of devices.

At each session throughout the tour the audience has expressed surprise and disappointment at the 7 day issue period. This is somewhat allayed once we explain that this is a new service with an initial startup collection and to ensure as many customers as possible can experience ebooks the issue period has initially been set to 7 days. Based on what we’ve seen so far, demand will be high, the collection will need to grow quickly, and the 7 day issue period will need to be extended to ensure customers aren’t disappointed.

Thursday’s sessions will be at Hutt City and Porirua.