Kobo e-readers and Cortes Islands DYI Literacy Book Club

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Assuming they don’t get snowed out, Cortes Literacy is holding a mandatory training for their new Rabuten Kobo e-readers today. Manda Aufochs Gillespie explained this is connected to Cortes Island’s new book club.

 Manda Aufochs Gillespie: “This book club is a hybrid of just another community organized volunteer 'Let's everybody pitch in book club' like we have seen multiple times before on Cortes and an attempt to blend with a program that Cortes Literacy is doing with Rabuten Kobo, which brings 20 digital eReaders into our community to loan and reuse, as well as a subscription to the Kobo Plus book library. They basically saw a need in rural and remote communities. People had no access to books during COVID. Libraries shut down, community halls shut down, schools shut down, and people in these remote communities had no access to books and reading material.”

“I thought, oh my goodness, this is exactly the thing that we need for our community. I was so distressed about that lack of access to reading material during COVID. So I put in an application and we now have 20 Kobo e-readers on the island and that we get to use for those in the book club who want to use them.”

Cortes Currents: How many books are there in the system?

Manda Aufochs Gillespie: “Apparently, it's thousands. I will say that the Kobo Plus subscription seems to focus on new releases, and so I find that it works best if you blend your Kobo Plus subscription on your Kobo with your public library card. This allows you access to all the books that the library has digitally accessible, as well as the Kobo plus subscription books. This is a great way to go. Anybody with a Kobo eReader or other eReader device can use their library card to basically check books out of the library like you would, except for their digital books.”

Cortes Currents: Is there some kind of payment plan involved?

Manda Aufochs Gillespie: “No.”

Cortes Currents: No? It's free?