Van Schaik launches multiple e-book vendor solution

The Van Schaik webstore previously only made allowance for one supplier to sell e-books, but the update makes provision for the webstore to sell from multiple providers.

This enables Van Schaik to increase their offering, be more accessible, and ultimately, further their reach.

As technical partner, Realm Digital was responsible for the implementation. including e-book token generation from different endpoints for each provider, as well as a visual indicator on the front-end to differentiate between each provider.

“We refactored the previous implementation, which only catered for a single e-book provider, to allow for several, using a strategy pattern. The aim was, to ensure minimal future costs for the client, for onboarding of new providers and quicker turnaround times,” says Realm Digital’s Technical Lead on the project, Adrian de Vries.

The different e-book providers are differentiated by colour ribbons over the jacket images and the detailed view then has delivery info in the respective colour of the provider, with the relevant logo.

The webstore previously sold books from only one supplier, namely VitalSource. Van Schaik Bookstore launched e-books for higher education with the introduction of the Vitalsource (a US brand) in South Africa through the online store nearly half a decade ago. The level of integration pulled off by Realm and Van Schaik Bookstore IT teams is such that students can buy e-book tokens (also known as redeem codes) in the physical book stores conveniently much like pre-paid data or airtime.

The update has now added SmartSWOT as an additional supplier. SmartSWOT is an exciting new e-reader platform developed for local use in South Africa where more offline functionality is required to enable seamless e-learning on- or off-campus especially for South Africa students that experience internet access challenges. SmartSWOT allows for local customisation and inclusion of facilitator content. It is data-light, so is suited for K-12, private college and TVET applications where an expensive LMS is too costly to maintain. The new implementation by Realm is an automated advancement from the very manual methods of allocating access credentials by Van Schaik Bookstore.

“As one of the oldest and well-known aggregators of content in the physical book world, it makes sense for us to be able to offer our Customers their preferred flavour of platform for e-books too. We are looking forward to having an even more credible selection of titles from various e-reader ecosystems to present to the growing market of e-learning. This initiative is as per our digital strategy roadmap so watch this space for more exciting options on how to read and learn with technology that is taking you places,” says Melvin Kaabwe, Group Digital Manager for Van Schaik Bookstore.

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