Lari's Bookshelf

My Nooky-Nook I was pleased to find the article Free E-books for Happy Patrons  in Booklist Online's The Corner Shelf. In it, author Rebecca Vnuk shares some great online resources librarians and library patrons can use to access free ebooks. The great thing about it is that you don't have to be a library patron or librarian to appreciate the following list: InkMesh  is a search engine that searches over 30 online sources for free e-books. You can search by title or author. Project Gutenberg , the original site for free text online, offers more than 33,000 free books that play nicely with any e-reader platform. You’ll find mostly classics and public-domain works here. No registration is required, and the site is easy to use. A nice feature is their “bookshelves”—collections grouped by topic. Baen Books , publisher of science fiction and fantasy, offers a number of their titles as free downloads. Established authors such as Eric Flint, Lois McMaster Bujold, Merced...

I have already written a little bit about OverDrive and how to access your library's digital collection , but this post is focused on how to browse, checkout and download your eBook after you've downloaded and installed the necessary software . Note: You will need to download and install Adobe Digital Editions before you try downloading a book from the library's digital eBook collection. You can download and install ADE from here .) The Search for the Perfect eBook So I'm on my library's OverDrive homepage , and I want to browse the eBooks available. I can look for eBooks in one of two ways, I can either browse titles, or narrow my search with an advanced search. Browsing Links Advanced Search Page For beginners, I'd recommend browsing titles before trying to do an advanced search, so you get used to what kind of formats and genres are generally available from your specific library. Otherwise, you may conclude a few advanced searches with zero ...

Here is a picture of what my library books look like: ...well maybe not all of my library books. But most. With only one car and a good 20 minute drive or so to my nearest library, I find it more convenient to check out books from my library through the internet. The Hawaii Public Library System has an Overdrive collection as do many other public libraries across the country. The fabulous thing about libraries that use OverDrive is that all the technical quirks, issues, and methods of checking out an e-book or e-audiobook, are the same at every library. So once you learn how to do it at one library, you know how to do it at all the others. Since some library websites can be a pain in the arse to navigate, I thought I'd share a simple way of finding out whether or not your library has a digital overdrive collection. Go to OverDrive's website located at  http://overdrive.com/  and type in your zip code in the field as shown in the image below: Once you type in your...