How to search for and view our school district's e-book/audio book collections on a computer If you are logged into a computer anywhere in the world, you will be able to view and read e-books, and listen to audio books, from our school district s Follett Shelf collection. If you download two Apps onto your portable devices, Destiny Quest and BryteWave, you will have access to our e-books and audio books on them as well. The steps below walk you through the process of searching for and viewing our e- books/audio books on a computer. A separate set of instructions has been created for working with our e-books and audio books on a portable device (i.e., i-pad, i-phone etc.) If you need extra help with this, each school has a teacher information technology contact who receives in-service to help support the teachers in his/her school. Your library clerk will be able to assist you as well. Also, please feel free to call me. From the School District 71 Home Page click on Destiny in the horizontal blue tool bar under the glacier. Destiny is the name of the software that our school district's libraries and LRC use. The Welcome to Sch Dist 71 Courtenay screen appears: Click on your school. For this example, I clicked on Airport Elementary, as a teacher from Airport Elementary would. The home page for your school appears: 1
You will need to log in. The Login button is found in the upper right-hand side of the screen. When you click on it, this screen appears: Enter your AMS username and password and click on Login. Your school's home page appears with more options available to you, i.e., the district Research Databases/Feature Films and the Passwords to access them: To access the district's e-book and audio book collections, called the Follett Shelf, click on the Catalog tab right under the name of your school at the top of the screen. This screen appears: Click on Follett Shelf on the left-hand side of the screen. It has a blue box around it. A screen similar to the one below appears. The titles will vary slightly amongst the elementary schools, as some titles are purchased for a particular school only. Some unlimited access e-books, for example, are only allowed to be purchased and placed in one school s collection only, for only those students to access when they login to their library. In general, e-books that are licensed for one user at a time are placed on the District Follett Shelf that the patrons of all schools are able to access when they login to their libraries. 2
Note that the tab on the top of the screen of the window that opens says Universal Search. You can also access the e-books and audio books by clicking on Universal Search instead of Follett Shelf. Two paths to the same resources As of Sept. 17, 2015, there were over 160 e-books and 37 audio books available to the elementary teachers and students across our district. Remember, the District Follett Shelf is accessed and shared by all elementary schools. Some school libraries will have additional titles for their patrons only. These titles do not display when patrons from another library login to their library. Interactive ebooks will be the next area of focus. To browse all of the e-books, click on See All 164 (or whatever number is there.) This screen appears: If you are looking for an e-book or audio book on a particular topic, such as dogs, then enter dog as the keyword on the previous screen instead of clicking on See all 164: 3
Clicking on the magnifying glass after typing in dogs brings up this screen: Note that because you are in Universal Search, all of the results for books, digital (ebooks/audio books) and Databases appear. To view just the e-books and audio books, click on the Digital tab on the top of the screen: This screen appears: 4
The format, i.e., e-book or audio book is listed under the author s name for each title. Note that if you pull up a lot of hits you can filter by author, subject, interest level etc.: I scrolled down the list of e-books and audio books on dogs and came across the e- book version of Because of Winn-Dixie that I wanted to look at. Note that there is also an audio book version of this title: 5
To open the e-book, click on Open. The title displays. Note that you will see a light blue arrow on the right hand side of the screen, mid-way down, that you can use to turn pages with, but you will not see a tool bar on the top and bottom of the screen until you click on the middle of the screen. The light blue arrows (very hard to see; look to the right of the cover): The tool bars that display on the top and bottom of the screen when you click on the middle of the screen: 6
If you ever lose the top and bottom navigation bars, all you have to do is click on the middle of the screen. The bottom navigation bar enables you to: Turn pages Set your font size, screen colour and number of pages displayed To hear audio, only if the speaker icon is present. If there is no speaker icon there is no audio. Click on the speaker then wait a few seconds. You will see the speaker icon change to a pause and stop icon: Every time you turn the page you will need to click on the speaker and wait for the voice to start. You will note that the voice is a computerized voice, and not a person reading. The audio books, in contrast, have actual people reading them so the voice quality is better. With the e-books that do have audio you can change the voice and the speed. You do this by clicking on the menu icon, which is three white horizontal lines in the upper righthand side of the page : This screen appears: 7
Click on Text-To-Speech Settings. This screen appears: Simply choose the voice and speed that you want to try and click Apply. You will notice that there are a variety of other topics in the drop down menu for you to explore. Redeem codes refers to codes publishers provide, usually for electronic textbooks, when schools purchase those textbooks. Other tools on the top tool bar are: This enables you to search for a specific word in the text. This provides you with information on the particular title. Click on it and this menu appears: Note that it is recommended that you check out the book if you wish to continue reading it later. When in the book, other tools enable you to make bookmarks and write notes: 8
Clicking on this icon, which is on the top toolbar, creates a bookmark for the page you are on. Clicking on this icon, which is on the left-hand side of the screen, displays your notebook. It shows pages you have bookmarked as well as notes you may have typed for certain pages. Some notes I made while practicing are displayed below: Click on this and your notebook for the current title, as well as all other titles your bookmarked or made notes for, will be display: 9
Once you are finished with your e-book, click on the Close icon on the top left-hand corner of the screen. If you haven t checked the book out, it will remind you to do so if you wish to keep reading it later: Audio books display similar to e-books in the list that appears after clicking on Follet Shelf, or after typing in a keyword pressing Enter. Notice that the audiobook version of Because of Winn-Dixie gives you the option to Play, instead of Open. 10
If you want to know what the book is about before playing it, simply click on the title: When you do click on Play the book opens up and the recording begins. Click on the upper and lower tool bars to learn more about the book, whether it is checked out or not etc. It is recommended you check out the book if you wish to read it at a later date. The system is set such that e-books and audio books will automatically be returned 3 weeks from the date you check them out (2 weeks for students.) If you finish with a title before the end date, please check it in so others may have access to it. Simply click on Bookbag that appears in the top blue tool bar when you click on Follett Shelf: A drop down menu appears: 11
Click on Checkouts. A screen similar to the one below appears: Simply click on Return beside the appropriate title. Note from the previous drop down menu you can also check your Holds, as well as access your Notebook. Want more than one student to have access? Consider buying a multi-headphone splitter than when plugged into the computer will allow up to 5 students to plug headsets into the splitter. They run from $2 to $15. 12