NetLibrary–download ebooks and audiobooks through your library

Netlibrary is a true modern-day digital library–it allows you to download and read or listen to ebooks and audiobooks through your library system. If your library system has this, you’re all set to borrow books online. To access NetLibrary, you go to your library’s website, and then search for the NetLibrary (or ebook and audiobook) link, and log in through there (you’ll need your library card). If your library system doesn’t have NetLibrary, you can always request that they join.

Because it’s a library, you can download and listen to the audiobook, or read the ebook, for a set number of days (through my library it’s 7 days), and then it becomes unusable on your computer or MP3 player–unless, of course, you renew it for another 7 days. You also have to be online after you’ve finished the download, to acquire a license to play the audio book. You’re allowed to download up to 10 audiobooks at a time (for 7 days). For ebooks, the process is similar, though you have to ‘return’ the ebooks by deleting them, before you can borrow another.

Our library, in co-operation with NetLibrary, offers 106 teen fiction audiobooks, with some good selections, though only 26 children’s audiobooks, and is nicely organized by subject. The ebooks are not organized by subject; you have to search, and there are a total of 7,587 of them.

NetLibrary is a great free resource for readers who like audiobooks and ebooks, want to instantly (well, almost instantly) read a new book, or can’t get to a brick-and-mortar library.

August 29th, 2007