The 55th annual Grammy awards were held this week in Los Angeles and the world was invited to sit on its collective couch and watch. Did the Grammys reaffirm your faith in pop music? Or like many in this age of increasingly fractured pop culture, where each of us is invited to delve ever deeper into our own pools of idiosyncratic taste, did you simply find yourself wondering, "Who are these people?"

Personally, I was surprised to discover that contrary to what I had thought, Mumford and Sons are not part of an elaborate J Crew advertising campaign, but are real band. Who knew?

Thankfully, the Free Library of Philadelphia has resources to keep me, and others like me, au courant. Head over to our downloadable media page and checkout Freegal. Freegal is a service that allows Free Library card holders to download three free MP3 each week. Once downloaded, these files are yours to keep. That's Freegal - free and legal.

Here are just a few of the Grammy winners and nominees you'll find at Freegal:

•  Mumford & Sons
• Adele
• Kelly Clarkson
• Usher
• Beyoncé
• Carrie Underwood
• Jack White
• P!nk
• Alabama Shakes
• Miguel 

Tags: databases, music

If you’ve been waiting for the process of checking out library ebooks to become simpler, Overdrive, the company that maintains the Free Library’s primary ebook collection, promises that their Next Generation platform will change the game.   

Overdrive’s Next Generation website is designed to be easier for new and returning users to search, browse, and check out ebooks and audiobooks. No more device authentication. No more confusion about formats. In fact, with the option to read ebooks in your web browser via OverDrive Read, many people won’t need to download any software at all. All you need is your library card and a device with a modern web browser (most computers, laptops, and tablets).

OverDrive will roll out the Next Generation website for the Free Library on January 11, 2013.

In addition to One-Step Checkout and OverDrive Read, the completely reimagined library websites incorporate other improved features like:

• Responsive design to provide consistent user experience across all devices.
• Simplification of all features to reduce the number of clicks.
• Each ebook or audiobook title will now bear a simple icon showing format and availability.
• A one-click  icon will add titles to your Wish List.
• An improved search with filtering options

Let's say there's a hot new bestseller tearing up the New York Times list.  It's everywhere, in the libraries, the books stores, at fancy displays by the grocery store checkout line, everyone, it seems, on every train, every subway, every airplane, and in every doctor's waiting room is reading it. Naturally, your curiosity is piqued and you want to read it for yourself to see what all fuss is about.  So, you head on over to www.freelibrary.org, click the pink download media button on our homepage. You're brimming with hopes of quickly and easily checking out and downloading the ebook or audiobook version in your pajamas.  However, you are saddened to discover that there's a waiting list!  Why, you wonder, must I wait to checkout a digital item? 

The answer is simple: ebooks work just like print books.  The library buys a certain number of them based on their popularity and what our budget will allow (donate here, if you are so moved) and we can loan each copy to one person at a time.  The only exceptions are ebooks from our Freading ebook service which works a bit differently.  Learn more about Freading here.   

OK. So that seems reasonable enough, but let's say you're in your P.J.s looking for that special ebook and it seems that the library doesn't have it all?  "How could that be?" you wonder, "Do those librarians live under rocks?  In caves?" 

Of course not, in fact, only a few of us still live under rocks or in caves, and while the reasons we might not have your ebook or audiobook are complicated it boils down to this: the digital book industry is in transition and book publishers have not yet decided how to handle digital library lending.  In fact, a number of big publishers won't sell their ebooks to libraries at all!  Learn more about that here and here.  When it comes to audiobooks, publishers are generally more comfortable with library lending, but most only offer their titles to us in WMA format rather than in the more universally acceptable MP3 format. This means that most of our audiobooks will work if you download them to a PC, but for those of us who prefer to use our Macs or mobile devices like tablets, phones, Kindles, Nooks, or any other gadgets that play MP3s but is not WMA compatible, the selection is more limited. Learn more about audiobooks here. 

So, in the meantime, please know that we're advocating for your right to enjoy library material in any format you choose and we ask that you do the same for us.  Take action here. 

The Free Library of Philadelphia offers a large number of downloadable audiobooks in our Overdrive collection.  Downloading audiobooks is simple, but the process you will use and the audiobook formats available to you depends upon the type of computer or device you have.

If you have an iPad, iPhone, iTouch, Nook Tablet, Kindle Fire, or other mobile device that can play MP3 files, go to your app store -- whether it's the iTunes Store, Google Play, the Nook Store, the Kindle App Store, or elsewhere -- and add the free Overdrive Media Console (OMC) App to your device.

From within the OMC app you will be able to search for, checkout, download, and listen to audiobooks.  Please note that you are restricted to MP3 format audiobooks with mobile devices.

If you would like to download audiobooks to your PC and listen to them through your computer or transfer them to an portable MP3 player such as an iPod, simply download Overdrive Media Console (OMC) software to your PC.  You will then go to our Overdrive collection on your PC to search for, checkout, and download your audiobook in either MP3 or WMA file format.  Once you download the audiobook, it will open in OMC and you can listen to it on your PC or use OMC's transfer feature to send it your portable music player. Find specific instructions on how to transfer audiobooks from your PC to an Apple iPod here.

The process is the same if you have a Mac computer at home.  However, on a Mac, you are not able to checkout WMA format audiobooks, only MP3. Find specific instructions on how to transfer MP3 audiobooks from a Mac to an Apple iPod here.

For more help and information on downloadable audiobooks see the comprehensive selection of audiobook articles and tips over at Overdrive's Help page. 

Tags: ebooks