RM Books

[bclarke]

Our Deputy Head came back from a conference with some nice info on RM Books. It is an ebook system where you can rent books which also includes text books. I took a look and it was free to sign up and start using their library of free books so I signed up. It looks nice and useful, some interesting publishers too. Five minutes in and I can read a book on my PC, but I find it better on my iPad. For some reason it doesn't activate the account no matter what I try.

 

I called support, boy the numbers are hard to find on RM aren't they and all their call logging stuff needs an RMID, which I don't have as it is a free system. The nice lady on the phone tells me there is no telephone support for this as it is free, although I can upload credit, real pounds, to rent ebooks, I have to use their self help stuff to find the problem. The nice lady took my details, syll-a-ble by syll-ab-le until she had the rather lengthy error message written down correctly. Is that normal?

 

Anyway, not a great start and is putting me off already but the system looks like it has potential to be really good.

 

Does anyone have any experience on this yet, good and bad. Also, what could be the problem with my iPad app, I have tried all sorts of username combos.

 

Thanks

[Gongalong]

Saw it at BETT and it looks like a great system. Our librarians have been asked to look at eBooks and are panicking, but this looks like a great way to start simply without any huge investment.

 

RM's support is rather hit and miss IME.

[JCT]

Morning both

 

I'm a Support Manager in RM so happy to help out if you are having any issues.

 

bclarke have you had a look at RM Books - How to download and activate the RM Books app on an Apple device (how to activate RM Books on an Apple device) ?

 

If that doesn't help you further you can log a support call with us via the RM Books Help and Support section at https://www.rmbookshelf.com/Help

 

Regards

 

Colin

 

Colin Turner

Group Leader, Implementation & Customer Support

RM Education

[bclarke]

It does look like a great system and has potential. I was surprised that the app doesn't synchronise with the books that are lent out to the users, in fact I am not quite sure of the benefit of the RM app as I can just download the book into iBooks. Pricing looks good too and class sets of books look competitive. I will keep trying it out but a suggestion would be to have the books synchronised with the end user.

 

Also, how do you know whether the book is removed from the end user when the time has finished and also, how do you know whether the book has been distributed to multiple users without using your system?

[MEdwards]

Hi bclarke, I work for the RM Books team as one of the product consultants. Firstly I'm sorry to hear that you haven't had a good experience with the support of the product so far, we do offer support on RM Books but this is handled by the RM Books team. The help pages are being updated with this information but I'm sorry you were not guided to the right area straight away. For future queries please contact us at [email protected] . In terms of the couple of points you raised above; the RM Books iOS app is a basic offline reader at the moment, but I am pleased to say we have new versions of all the reader apps coming and they will synchronise with the online viewer. Meaning that any ebooks allocated from the teacher to the student will automatically show in the iOS app when a student opens it. More information to come soon on when this will be available. To answer your other question; when a rented book is downloaded into one of the offline readers, the file is encrypted using Adobe DRM, at the end of the rental period the file will become inaccessible. If you'd like any further help or have any further questions/feedback please let us know at [email protected] . Kind Regards, Matt Edwards.

[bclarke]

@MEdwards Thank you very much for your response. I think these changes will make this a great system. I can then see our librarian, who is wondering where the future of librarians is going, managing the overall system and being able to lend out books as needed in the knowledge that the book will be delivered to their device. Also, if you can convince more school publishers to come on board with text books that would be brilliant. Once the app is updated I think I will take a serious look at using this system in school, but I will keep looking to see how it can fit in now. It could be great for teachers at the moment who all have iPads so they can show the books on the board easily. Out of all my gripes with the system, I think this one is probably at a better stage than others.

[MEdwards]

@bclarke I am spending a lot of my time visiting schools at the moment to look at how they see ebooks being used in their school and looking at how RM Books can help with this. From what you've said there are some areas of RM Books which would definitely interest you and help with what you're trying to achieve with ebooks. If you'd like to arrange for me to come out and have a chat with you about this and talk about some of the other areas of concern you have, then please drop me an email at [email protected] . Thanks Matt

[bclarke]

@MEdwards that sounds great. I will be in touch shortly. I would appreciate the chance to chat face to face about RM Books.

[MEdwards]

@bclarke Great, I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks Matt

[funkyfin2000]

Quick update to this - RM Books has changes a lot and is getting better and better (RM are certainly not letting it just sit as a product) and the IOS and Android app now syncs with your RM account (across proxied servers too) and works really well!

 

We role it out to 170 schools next year! Can't wait!

 

Rich

[RMBooks]

Thanks @funkyfin2000, we are looking forwards to the Launchpad 365 rollout! As well as new features we have loads of great new content with more and more publishers signing up all the time. Over the summer we hope to have 2 more development releases so don't forget to follow RMBookshelf on twitter for instant updates.