NYPL Blogs: eReading Room

Ultimate Guide to Free Library eBooks: Kindle Edition

Ruth Rodriguez, Grand Concourse Library — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:59:26 -0400

If it has happened to our patrons at the Grand Concourse Library and myself...

...then it must be happening somewhere else!

Here we are with our exciting new Amazon Kindles, and nothing to read except for Jane Eyre or Alice in the Wonderland — not that there's anything wrong with that!

But below I am going to show you a couple of tips and tricks on how to get books on your Kindle even if the titles you want are unavailable.

If you are already familiar with accessing books using http://ebooks.nypl.org and just want to see the tricks skip to Step #3. What you need before you start...

An Amazon.com account that is linked to your Kindle (the username is usually the email address you use to purchase items and the password is whatever you deemed it to be).

Knowledge of your library card and pin number (a secret 4 digit number you created when you applied a library card (this number can be changed at any NYPL branch with proof of ID).

A browser which can open various tabs within the same page.

WiFi Connection (Yes, you can do this using NYPL WiFi at your local branch).

Your Kindle Reader, or other device with the Kindle App

If you're a newbie, let's begin!

Step #1

Open http://ebooks.nypl.org and select the option under All Formats to Kindle Books

make sure to select available.

Step #2

Type in your desired book title or Author (Recommended) in the search bar and when it appears on the screen click on the Link Add to e-list make sure that the copy reads Kindle book.

Step #3

You will be prompted to Log In to your NYPL account, Type in your library card number (14 digits) and your pin number (4 digits).

This is when you have the option to continue browsing or proceed to checkout, for the sake of this tutorial we will click proceed to checkout. If you continue browsing you can add books to your list and then check them all out at once.

Step #4

You will be redirected to window which allows you to choose how many days you'd like to have your book checked out for. 7 days, 14 days or 21 days, remember it is not possible to renew e-books so choose your time wisely. Click confirm check out.

Step #5

An option guiding you to download book will appear, click Get for Kindle.

Step #6

You will then be redirected to the Amazon website, click Get Library Book.

Step #7

Step #8

Choose the Kindle name, device or app you would like to send it to.

Step #9

Book should automatically appear on your Kindle app or front page.

Tips and Tricks

If the desired title is unavailable, but you are willing to wait for an item to become available you don't need to click available titles in the search bar.

You can leave the default All Formats.

If you want to read anything now and don't care what it is as long as its the genre you like. You can type the genre in the search bar, and select available titles.

E.g.: Type Romance > click available > select Kindle book

This will provide a list that will be delivered to you instantly.

There are more tutorials similiar to this one, check them out below.

Library Books on Kindle: A Visual Walkthrough by Lauren Lampasone, Reference and Research Services
Get the Most Out of Your Gadgets With NYPL by Lauren Lampasone, Reference and Research Services
Ebooks: Putting the "E" in Free by Brooke Watkins, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, General Research Division
Quick Start Guides

Special Thanks to my colleague Sherise Pagan for lending me her Kindle for the tutorial.

I Love Reading: Bookmark This Post

Lauren Lampasone, Reference and Research Services — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:04:32 -0500

This month in the eReading Room I shared with you some of the ways that voracious readers are able to adapt their reading habits to the online environment. I explained differences between e-formats, the best ways to manage both short and long reads, and today I'll talk about clipping, bookmarking, highlighting, and marginalia — concepts that sound old-school but that are also being electronically reinvigorated.

BiblioCommons

The new NYPL catalog (new as of last summer) makes it easier than ever to make lists of books you plan to read or on topics you know a lot about. It also is a nice way to keep track of what you've already read, write reviews and rate materials.

If you're not from New York State or you use more than one library, you can also try out the list-making and bibliographic tools on WorldCat.org.

Bibliographies

If you've spent any time doing research, you know that it is important to continuously maintain records of what you've read, what you want to read, and what you're going to cite. Zotero is a tool that you can download as a standalone program or as a plugin for Chrome or Firefox. It also integrates into your word processor. It allows you to track the basic information about your sources, whether they are books, chapters, articles, or websites. It also allows you to manage, tag, share, search, and export your information. Zotero is a project of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building periodically offers classes on using Zotero, so check the calendar!

For students doing a short project and looking for a quick way to get all of those books into proper citation format, there are apps like Quick Cite and EasyBib for iPhone and Android that scan a ISBN barcode and return a formatted citation. Bibme does the same thing on the web for MLA, APA, Chicago and Turabian style citations, WorldCat for APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, and Turabian.

Notes

Similar in concept to Zotero, but less academically-oriented, is Evernote. Upload pretty much anything (PDF, text, photo, website) to the service using the desktop client, web client, or one of the mobile apps. Full text search is available and will even enable OCR on photographs of text; you can be reading a print reference book and take a snapshot of a definition or quotation with the smartphone app and be able to find it later in a search.

Bookmarks and Favorites

If you spend much time on the web, you know there are certain sites you return to again and again, and then others that you want to be able to reference in the future without too much digging around. Even the earliest web browsers had the functionality to save Uniform Resource Identifiers, websites designated as favorites, shortcuts, or bookmarks.

But what about when you're away from your usual computer (or your usual computer breaks down and dies)? The rise of Web 2.0-style applications that allowed for web-based storage and sharing of bookmarks was a boon for info omnivores, not to mention librarians.

Delicious - one of the original social bookmarking services, del.icio.us was launched in 2003. Though it recently got a facelift, it still lets users bookmark sites, and add their own descriptions and tags for organization.
Pinboard - similar to the previous format of delicious, there is a one-time fee to join.
Diigo - allows you to highlight, mark up webpages with sticky notes, and share bookmarks privately within a group.
Xmarks - allows you to sync bookmarks between browsers and within a web-based account.
If you use Chrome you can also sync bookmarks between computers within the browser itself; sign in with your Google account.
There are a bajillion other social bookmarking sites out there, find one that you like in terms of functionality as well as the community that surrounds it.

Visual Bookmarks

Pinterest is arguably the most popular of these right now, though not without criticism. The issue with images is that you can easily snip them from the source, but sometimes that leaves little indication of where the image originally came from, or credit to the creator. There are also the legal implications of sites retaining duplicate copies of the image files. Copyrighted images on Flickr can no longer be easily posted on the service. But used carefully and with basic online etiquette (give credit if possible and link back to the source!), visual bookmarks can be stunning and inspirational, as well as great research and personal reference tools. Did you know that NYPL and the Art and Picture Collection have been "pinning"?

Another visual bookmark service is Zootool, and Delicious (mentioned above) now has a similar feature called "stacks."

Interested to find the original source of an image? Try TinEye or Google Search By Image.

Highlights and Quotations

Readmill and findings are two sites that allow you to save bits of text from books or websites and share them with a community. Social reading has been around for a long time, so what can these new services offer? It's a good question.

If you are an Amazon Kindle user, you may have noticed that by default you can see what other readers have highlighted in the books that you are reading. It can be interesting to see what is popular right now, but did you know that you can also sign in to see highlights you have made to the books you've already read (both purchased and borrowed from the library)? Notes and highlights get saved to your Amazon account so if you return a book and check it out again, you'll keep your highlights. Hard to imagine that being possible in the print-only days (we librarians tend to discourage you from marking up the books.) Learn how to use Evernote to organize and back up your highlights.

Candide 2.0, an NYPL Labs project from a few years back, is a great example of how we can think about marginalia (notes in the margins of a text) in the digital age.

What is your favorite way to bookmark? As long as it isn't dog-earing the pages, let us know in the comments!

I Love Reading: Long Form Essays and Journalism

Lauren Lampasone, Reference and Research Services — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:03:21 -0500

In this week's installment of I Love Reading I want to talk about the kind of reading that is not books, not news, not blogs, but something in between. It demands a little bit more of your attention span than Twitter, but maybe not as much as your book group's latest pick. It can be from last week or fifteen years ago, and still be relevant to today. It can be a true tale of crime and punishment, an industry exposé, an interview or profile of a famous figure, an in-depth review, or a speech. It could be a short story, nonfiction, or an interpretation or some kind. In my opinion, it makes the best kind of reading for airplanes, waiting rooms, the subway, and my couch. You won't exactly find it on the shelves in the library, unless you know where to look. It's the 'long read.'

While the future of niche news weeklies may not be as dire as other consumer magazines, things are changing rapidly. Tablets and ereaders are becoming more ubiquitous and our reading habits are changing too.

While most of us are content to catch up on the news and the latest short blog posts on our computers at our desks, an eight-thousand word essay is a different story. It requires us to temporarily mute the pings of our inboxes, recline slightly, and maybe even brew a cup of tea. Another thing — we don't want to have to depend on an active Internet connection to do this reading — airplanes and subway cars are two of the best places to read long articles, and they also happen to be the least connected. (The horror... what if you forget to bring a magazine with you and the only thing to look at is SkyMall?!) Thankfully, a few years ago software developers realized this and started working on solutions.

Apps

Instapaper, Readability, and Read It Later are three examples of apps (or Send-to-Kindle services) for various devices that let you save long articles for reading later, storing them offline on your device so you can read them whether or not you have access to the Internet.

The other great thing about these services is that they work together (using the magic of APIs) with other apps you may have installed to create a seamless sharing-to-saving experience. Checking Twitter updates on your iPad and see a cool article? Send it to Instapaper. Reading RSS feeds on your PC and find something that looks fascinating but is several pages long? Send it to Read It Later. Did your boss send a link to your email of an article that you really should read? Open the link in Firefox and then click a bookmarklet to add it to Readability.

Discovery tools

givemesomethingtoread.com works with Instapaper to do just that. Click the "read later" button and you'll have the articles of your choice ready the next time you load the app.

longreads.com features both curated and community picks for articles. It also has a handy search feature and lets you browse by length. The site started as a Twitter hashtag, #longreads, that the creator Mark Armstrong encouraged friends and followers to use to share this type of writing more broadly.

longform.org lets you see the latest picks or browse the archive organized by topic, writer, source, year, subject tag and story type.

@ifyouonly read one thing today... the editor suggests and tweets a link each day.

The Back Issues blog from The New Yorker's archivists revists older articles that may warrant another look based on current events. Today's post? Calvin Trillin on Mardi Gras, a piece from 1998.

Readings about long form reading

"How Technology Is Renewing Attention to Long-form Journalism," Poynter, 8/12/10
"Long-form journalism starts a new chapter," The Guardian, 8/29/10
"Long-Form Journalism Finds an Online Friend," The New York Times' Gadgetwise, 11/4/10
"When a Web Community Becomes a Book Publisher," The Atlantic, 1/18/12
"The Long and Short of New York Magazine’s Longreads," The New York Observer, 2/1/12

Long Reads at the Library Databases

Find journals and magazines you can access online with your library card; search by title using this tool.

Many, including Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, New York, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Economist, and Esquire, can be found in Academic One File. The embargo period may vary, but it just means that you have to wait to see the latest content. While it's true much of this can be found for free online, there might be instances where you want something older that is behind a paywall, or to search across multiple titles for articles on a single topic.

The New York Review of Books is now available to search and browse on site at any library location. (Read more about NYRB in Ray's post.)

Books

The Best American Travel Writing 2011
The Best American Science and Nature Writing, 2011
Best Music Writing 2011
Best Food Writing 2011 (ebook)
Best Sex Writing 2012 (ebook)
Additional anthologies of "best writing"
A 2005 fiction anthology, but on this theme: The Paris Review Book for Planes, Trains, Elevators, and Waiting Rooms

Visit

Love reading articles? Stop by the DeWitt Wallace Periodicals Room in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building for general as well as obscure magazines, journals, and zines, and learn more about the history of this industry in New York City.

What good, lengthy articles have you enjoyed recently?

I Love Reading: News, Blogs, Twitter

Lauren Lampasone, Reference and Research Services — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:12:17 -0500

In this week's episode of I Love Reading, I will talk about updates. I don't mean the kind of updates that clutter your Facebook feed, though they are basically the same thing. When I say updates I mean news in the journalistic, newspaper sense, news from your field or area of interest, or news that is created and shared among your group of friends and trusted online acquaintances.

A lot of these updates and news sources now take the form of blogs. Long ago, a blog was considered to be an online diary or personal journal intended for a small audience. Over the past decade, the blogging format has become mainstream and is used by major news organizations as well as individuals who make a living writing on various topics for their devoted audiences.

What to Read?

Where do you get your information? This post will not go into detail about all of the places where you can find a steady stream of information online, but beyond traditional news sources, here are some general interest reading suggestions:

Arts & Letters Daily consists of "news, reviews, latest trends, breakthroughs, disputes, and gossip in arts and culture."
Brain Pickings "is a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers, and separating the signal from the noise to bring you things you didn’t know you were interested in until you are."
Metafilter is a community weblog, where members contribute links of interest with the intention of also fostering discussion.
The Morning News has "features, morning and afternoon headlines, with links to the most interesting news items, articles, and oddities around the web."

There are active online communities around every possible interest: books, food, lifestyle, productivity, just to name a few. And pretty much every profession these days has a robust online community with news sites and personal blogs where you can find the latest resources and tips to help you in your career, librarians included.

RSS

You could visit each website you like once a day and see what's new. But if you're pressed for time or want a high-level overview to browse through without a lot of distractions (like ads), you can subscribe to each site and receive notifications when there is new content. RSS is an easy way to receive and process the chunks of information regularly posted on a website. Look for the orange icon to locate an RSS feed. Some sites list out all of their available feeds by subject:

You can subscribe to and read feeds in an RSS reader, which can be:

a standalone desktop client
integrated with your email client
a browser based extension (Firefox, Chrome)
a web based account (Google Reader) you can access from any computer
a tablet or smartphone app

Once you have all the websites you want to read added, you will see some kind of number that reflects how many unread items you have. It doesn't make sense to get frustrated about the amount of feed reading you can accomplish in a day, so at some point "mark all as read" and move on. This is reading as skimming, finding out what is new and exciting — try not to get overwhelmed. Also, clean house regularly to get rid of feeds that update too often for you to manage, that you find yourself ignoring most of the time, or are otherwise not adding anything to your life.

Twitter

If your attention span is short (140 characters or less) you might find that Twitter is a good place for you to find out what is new. Turns out it is not just people talking about what they had for breakfast! Try following a news organization, a journalist, a library, or a professional association, in addition to people you trust (in real life and online) for links to the best news and updates from the field (literally as well as figuratively.)

Not sure where to start? Ask NYPL has compiled Twitter "lists" on various topics: Consumer, Health, Books, E-Resources, Reference, and NYC Community Information. You can check this list to see all of the NYPL Twitter accounts too! Start by following one of these lists, or follow a few individual Twitter accounts from them that interest you.

Tablet and Smartphone Apps

There are lots of apps for reading RSS feeds on your device. In addition, it seems that with the rise of the iPad and tablet devices has come the concept of "personalized magazines." These apps work using RSS technology, and sometimes offer preloaded content suggestions. Most allow you to add your favorite blogs, news sites and Twitter feeds, and then "flip" around until something catches your eye, much as you would with a magazine. Zite, Flipboard and Pulse are three popular examples; see this comparison chart for more information.

Information Overload

I have to admit, I feel a little overwhelmed when I think about all of the ways we read online. How can I possibly go into detail about everything! My strategy is to break things down into smaller parts until it is more manageable. The feeling of information overload remains; it just so happens that many books have been written that explore and endeavor to treat this affliction. But is it really a new phenomenon?

Information Overload! list in BiblioCommons
"Being Wired or Being Tired: 10 Ways to Cope with Information Overload" by Sarah Houghton-Jan (Librarian in Black)
Observe a Digital Sabbath or check in to a monastery (or maybe not.)
And finally: The cure for information overload (just kidding).

What blogs or news sources do you like to read and how do you usually read them?

Do you tune out in the evenings or on weekends, or do you have to escape to a remote cabin in the woods once a year? Share your thoughts in the comments.

I Love Reading: EPUB and PDF

Lauren Lampasone, Reference and Research Services — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:59:07 -0500

For the first part of this series, I want to talk about a few of the formats commonly used for reading digital text as well as the tools — software and devices — we can use to read them.

Library ebooks are available in EPUB, PDF, and Kindle format. The Library also subscribes to hundreds of databases, some of which will allow you to download articles or page images for personal use in PDF format.

Jump to files and formats:

The difference between EPUB and PDF
Borrowing library ebooks
Other reading material you can get from the Library besides ebooks
Public domain ebooks
Comics, graphic novels and manga

Jump to software and devices: on Mac or PC, iPad, Kindle, Android Device.

Formats The difference between EPUB and PDF

It helps to think of a PDF as a snapshot of a page in a physical book or journal. Charts, images, and diagrams will appear the same way they appear in the printed book. This is great for picture books as well as others where the design is key; it is also the main option for ebooks in non-Roman text (such as Chinese). You can jump to a page and it will be the same as in the print version. If you enlarge the page, you are zooming in to a section; this sometimes makes it not a practical option for people with low vision.

With EPUB, the emphasis is on the text itself. You can resize the text in either direction, to make short pages with large text or long pages with tiny text (this is referred to as "reflow").

I know you're probably saying, what about Kindle? Amazon uses a proprietary format based on Mobipocket (MOBI), which was initially developed for PDAs and other mobile devices. Kindle format is very similar to EPUB in the way text displays.

For additional formats in varying degrees of obscurity, see Wikipedia's comparison.

Borrowing library ebooks

Start by browsing our ebook catalog (also integrated in our full catalog) to find ebooks in EPUB, PDF, and Kindle format. All of our ebooks are protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM). What this means is that at the end of the lending period, the files are no longer accessible to you (they can't be opened and read) unless you check them out again. You also can't send them to a friend to read, or post them on the Internet for anyone to grab. Part of the checkout process is verifying your access to the file. For Kindle books this means Amazon keeps track of the file associated with your account; for EPUB and PDF this is managed through your Adobe ID, which you have to sign up for when you start using Adobe Digital Editions on your computer or OverDrive Media Console on your mobile device.

Other reading material you can get from the Library besides ebooks

We have hundreds of databases. Here's where you might want to start your research (or reading). Depending on which one you're using and what you end up finding, you may be able to save an article, reference book entry, or newspaper image as a PDF or plain text or HTML. These are all DRM-free (with the understanding that you are using them for personal research only.) How to get them on your iPad or Kindle? Read on.

Public domain ebooks

Love reading Twain, Dickens, Austen, Poe? You can always read these authors for free and without worrying about DRM. If you're doing research in publications from before 1923, a great deal has been digitized through Internet Archive, Google Books, and Hathi Trust. Brooke did a good job covering some of the options already; to see another rundown of various channels see the free ebooks section in eBook Central. Basically many of these sites let you choose your format — whichever you prefer or works best with your device.

Comics, Graphic Novels and Manga

I did not forget about you, readers of comics! We do have these materials in eNYPL, mostly in PDF and Kindle format. You can learn more about comic-specific formats and software at the MobileRead Wiki.

Software and Devices On a computer

You can use Adobe Digital Editions to read and manage both protected (DRM) and unprotected PDF and EPUB files. Under Library, use the drop down to select Add Item to Library. Then you can transfer your files to your Nook, Kobo, or Sony Reader if you want.

Calibre is another tool that can be used to manage an ebook library. It can sync files to your device and import metadata (Title, Author, Date Published) about your books to help keep them organized. It can also convert files that are not protected by DRM to other formats.

PDF files are sometimes easier to view on e-readers when extra white space in margins is cropped. Tools for cropping include: PDFScissors, Briss, OSX Preview, GoodReader for iOS, and Adobe Acrobat.

On an iPad

For library ebooks, you'll either use OverDrive Media Console or the Kindle app for the most seamless experience with DRM files. Otherwise, the default reader for non-DRM PDF and EPUB is iBooks. If you'd prefer a different way to manage your files, here are some alternatives:

GoodReader - Mashable called it “a Swiss Army knife of awesome;" it is definitely a Swiss Army knife for managing files of any type. It handles large files well, and allows you to mark up PDFs and crop margins.
Bluefire Reader (free) - supports Adobe DRM, so you can read both library and DRM-free PDF and EPUB.
Dropbox (free) - simple, no frills cloud storage, lets you share with others and between devices easily.
Evernote (free) - billed as a note-taking application, lets you easily save photos and webpages in addition to files.

If you have one or more of these installed, when you select Open In... you will be given a choice where to open and save your file. (Again, with library ebooks, the only option you will see is OverDrive Media Console.)

On a Kindle

Kindle Personal Documents Service - You can send and view files on Kindle Keyboard, Kindle, Kindle Touch, and Kindle for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Upon delivery, the files can be found in the Documents folder under Archive.
Your Send-to-Kindle email address is [name]@kindle.com and can be found at amazon.com/manageyourkindle
At the Manage Your Kindle page, also make sure to authorize the email address you will be sending documents from.
Send PDF, MOBI, and TXT files. To have a document converted to Kindle format (.azw), the subject line should be "convert."
Fees for using the service on 3G
Transferring Personal Documents via USB

On an Android Device

PDF reading and management in Android, all free:

For more reading app suggestions, see "A catalog of Android reading apps," dearauthor.com

Phew, that was a lot! Just a reminder this post is not an endorsement of any particular software product or device, but an informational resource with many options for you to explore. If you love reading PDF, MOBI, EPUB, or CBR, please ask questions or share your experiences in the comments. Next week I'll talk about reading news, blogs and Twitter for up-to-the-second information.

How Do I Love Reading? Let Me Count the Ways

Lauren Lampasone, Reference and Research Services — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:31:08 -0500

This February in the eReading Room we'll be celebrating all the different ways we love to read. If you're the kind of person who will read a cereal box if it's the only thing nearby, you'll want to pay special attention to this four-part series. I'll be detailing some of the new ways we read now, outside of the traditional printed-and-bound-and-published volume (which, don't get me wrong, we still love just as much). This purpose of this series is to help you get the most out of online reading at work, at home, or on the go.

I Love Reading: PDF and EPUB
All about ebooks and other downloadable text. Whether you have an ereader or mobile device, you read on your computer, or (gasp!) you just print everything out, this post will explain the differences between formats, help you manage your files, and demystify Digital Rights Management (DRM).

I Love Reading: News, Blogs, Twitter
As print newspaper subscriptions continue to decline, more people look to the internet for up-to-the-minute news. This post will explain how to stay on top of sources of news and current information — and also how to avoid that feeling of info overload.

I Love Reading: Magazines and Long Form Journalism
Sometimes a true story of a unimaginable crime, an industry exposé, or a larger than life personality can be just as gripping as a work of fiction. Many magazines specialize in this type of journalism, and this post will share how online communities have formed around keeping this type of reading alive.

I Love Reading: Bookmarks, Pins, Favorites, Sharing
Maybe you read it and loved it and want to share it with others in your community, maybe you need to collect a bibliography for a project or paper, or maybe you want to save something to read or reference later. This post will discuss ways to save the things you read.

Is there anything in particular you'd like to see addressed on any of these topics? Please leave a comment!

Kerri's eBook Tips: Keep it Simple with One Catalog!

Kerri Wallace, Mulberry Street Branch Library — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:12:08 -0500

The other day someone asked if I still read "regular books." Have I become anti-paper with my new Kindle love? The answer to that is, look at the paper cuts on my fingers. I am a fan of reading, whether it's in book format or electronic. During my commute I use my Kindle because it's lighter to carry around, but I still love the feeling of a heavy book on my lap when I read in my apartment. When looking for material to read or download, I can now do all of my searching and downloading in New York Public Library's catalog. Thus my latest eReading searching tip: keep it simple, use one catalog.

When you go to the New York Public Library's website you can search for materials in the search box located in the top right hand corner. When your results show, you can narrow down your search on the left hand side by choosing Availability, Format, Audience, and when items were acquired by the library. Let's say you type in "Joyce Carol Oates." Click on format to see what items might be available to download electronically. If it's not available to download, then you have the option to place a hold or request in the paper format.

My other favorite way to search the catalog for eBooks is by using the Advanced Search, which is located directly underneath the Search button. Clicking this link will bring you to a form where you have multiple options to narrow down your search. After you type in your keywords (or author, title, subject, etc.), scroll down the page, where again, you can choose the format of the items that you're looking for. For example, try typing "biography" as a subject and choose the format "eBook." You will get a list of great biographies that are available to download right to your eReader. Another thing that's great about using the Library's catalog is that you can now download the item right away, rather than get directed to eNYPL. You can also view your eCheckouts and eHolds from My Account on the New York Public Library's website. One catalog for one-stop shopping! Or should I say borrowing?!

Whew, after all that searching, here's a list of some great biographies that are available to request and download through the New York Public Library's catalog.

Celebrities:

Culinary Biographies:

History:

Humor:

Memoirs:

Kerri's eNYPL Tips: The Wish List

Kerri Wallace, Mulberry Street Branch Library — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:14:26 -0500

I'm sure you've created a wish list in your mind that contains some impossibly unattainable items. For example, one of my wish list items includes a home on a private island. While my improbable wish list grows, I have started another list — an eNYPL wish list — where at least my reading dreams will come true.

My fellow eNYPL users: my number one eNYPL tip is to utilize the wish list feature, if you haven't already done so.

Last time, I mentioned that the best way to utilize the eNYPL catalog is by browsing, which can be a bit overwhelming and time consuming, as the catalog is so vast. Your eNYPL account allows you to place 12 holds, but you can add as many items as you would like to your wish list. As I browse the catalog, I like to add items to my wish list that I'm interested in reading but may not want to read or place on hold right away. This way, when I want to look for a new book to read, I simply browse my wish list first before consulting the eNYPL catalog. Keep in mind that the eList is different from a wish list. The eList is like an online shopping cart that lets you check out all your books at once rather than one at a time.

Don't know what to add to your wish list? Why not choose a popular mystery series? Here are some suggestions. You can also find more suggestions on this BiblioCommons list.

James Patterson's Women's Murder Club series:

Karin Slaughter's Grant County series:

Lee Child's Jack Reacher series:

Lisa Scottoline's Rosato & Associates series:

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy:

Need an eBook Recommendation?

Kerri Wallace, Mulberry Street Branch Library — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 03:39:31 -0500

After the unfortunate death of my Sony Reader, I went through the five stages of grief, as the loss of my device was a very dramatic event. I denied that it was broken, I threw a temper tantrum, I told a Best Buy employee that I would do anything to have it back, and I cried on the train, but I finally came to accept that I had sat on my Sony Reader and I alone was to blame. As I browsed sadly through the eNYPL catalog, images of the distinctly curved cracked screen flashed through my head, and I imagined the day when I could once again comfortably read a book on my 1 1/2 hour (sometimes standing) train commute. Finally the day came when I was united with a new eReader — a Kindle Fire from the Christmas gift giver, Santa Claus. I instantly downloaded a book and my obsessive use of the eNYPL catalog began again.

Whether you are a new or seasoned user of eNYPL, you may realize that searching the catalog can be a little tricky. Not all our favorite authors and titles are available to download instantly, so the best way to search is by browsing, which can be time consuming. So, I have decided to help you out! Every so often, check back for some of my eNYPL browsing tips and book recommendations when you're in need for a read. Be sure to also check out NYPL's new eBook Central if you have any questions about your device.

Today, I would like to start you off with a reading recommendation. The first book that I downloaded onto my new device was 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill. It has been on my to-read list for quite some time and happened to be one of the books that was waiting to be read on my ill-fated Sony Reader. 20th Century Ghosts is a collection of horror stories written by Joe Hill, a.k.a. Joseph King, Stephen King's son. While the collection is classified as horror — and there certainly were spine tingling tales — overall I thought the stories were more twisted and weird (but in a very good way).

This addictingly odd collection features a boy who transforms into a giant bug (Kafka fans?), a young outcast that befriends a living inflatable boy (my favorite of all the stories), a horror novel editor that finds himself in a real horror scenario, and plenty more. All the stories will grab your attention as you quickly devour Hill's writing.

If you like Hill's collection or creepy, twisted stories in general, here are similar titles that are available through eNYPL:

A Digital Public Library for America?

Matthew Boylan, Ask NYPL — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 07:26:37 -0500

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one... Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe... seems to have been designed by nature.

— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to MacPherson, August 13, 1813

The future of a Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) was the subject of a recent conference at Columbia University. The keynote address on DPLA was given by Robert Darnton, Director of the Harvard University Library (and an NYPL Trustee). No one has done more to push the idea of DPLA into the public consciousness than Darnton, who has written numerous articles, testified before both houses of Congress, and sought both public and private support to bring this idea into fruition. Last month there was an announcement that two foundations — the Sloan Foundation and Arcadia Fund — would contribute five million dollars toward its realization. The same day, DPLA announced that it would be collaborating with Europeana, the European digital library project, that has already began aggregating some five million digital objects from research libraries. Darnton now hopes to have some version of DPLA up and running by April 2013.

The objective of DPLA can be summed up as the desire to make as much of the learning and cultural patrimony of the United States in the humanities, the sciences, the social sciences, and other areas of knowledge free and accessible to the citizens of the United States and around the world. The technical backbone of DPLA is the use of free open source code. In order to lay the foundation for its collections, DPLA will begin with works in the public domain (broadly speaking, those published before 1923) that are freely accessible, and many of which have already been digitized. The Library of Congress and the National Archive have both already committed to providing content to DPLA, and it is hoped that the digitized holdings of NYPL, other major research libraries, as well as works already digitized by initiatives like the Hathi Trust and the Internet Archive, are set for inclusion in DPLA. DPLA will provide a number of tools to facilitate broad public access to this content.

The next objective of DPLA is to digitize the vast bulk of cultural works that are still in copyright — but long out of print — and, one would think, unlikely to generate any meaningful stream of revenue for those publishers and authors who hold copyright to these works. However, attorneys and lobbyists for publishers and authors who envision an endless "long tail" of sales for these works have strenuously resisted any meaningful change to existing United States copyright law, which in the view of many is both archaic and convoluted. There are now many proposed changes to copyright law that could clear away the roadblocks to the realization of DPLA. One can only hope that the relationship of DPLA with that of the representatives of the authors and publishers becomes, as Tom Allen, President of the American Association of Publishers, suggests, much like that of Humphrey Bogart to Claude Rains (the Vichy official who has just pointedly ignored Bogart’s shooting of a Gestapo Major) at the end of Casablanca: "the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Science Fiction eBooks: Now Available for Kindle!

Thomas Knowlton, Mid-Manhattan Library, Language and Literature — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:53:29 -0400

If you missed the big news, The New York Public Library now offers free ebooks for your Kindle! To celebrate, I've put together a somewhat exhaustive list of science fiction ebook titles to make it easy to browse them at a glance.

Click to go directly to any author: Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, China Miéville, Kim Stanley Robinson, Neal Stephenson, Vladimir Sorokin, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Need help? Check out this useful step-by-step guide to downloading Kindle ebooks. Many of these titles are also available for the Barnes and Noble Nook and Sony E-reader as well.

Douglas Adams

Isaac Asimov

Original Foundation Trilogy

Robot Series: Elijah Baley Novels

Other Works

Philip K. Dick

China Miéville

Bas-Lag Series

Other Works

Kim Stanley Robinson

The Mars Trilogy

Neal Stephenson

Early Works

The Baroque Cycle

Later Works

Vladimir Sorokin

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Want even more science fiction ebooks? Check out our recent posts on Mid-Manhattan Library's Tumblr page for free Creative Commons and public domain ebooks!

When They Trod the Boards: John Lithgow

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 13:26:55 -0400

We hereby announce the new blog series When They Trod the Boards, designed to highlight notable film or television actors who have a substantial background in stage work as documented in the collections of the Library's Billy Rose Theatre Division. We launch the series with John Lithgow and his new memoir, Drama: An Actor’s Education, published this week. Traditional books and ebooks are now flying off the Library's shelves! We’d like to highlight some of his shining moments on stage as reflected in our vast collection of stage photographs.

While many will know Lithgow from his television work as the lovably neurotic alien in 3rd Rock From the Sun, from his movie work in Harry and the Hendersons and The World According to Garp, as well as from his memorable voiceover work, lovers of the stage have long enjoyed his presence on and off-Broadway.

According to Contemporary Theatre Film and Television (the go-to source for bios and performance histories), John Lithgow debuted on stage as Mustardseed in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Antioch Shakespeare Festival in 1953, but readers of his new bio will learn that his acting debut actually started much earlier, at age 2. Lithgow's Broadway debut was in The Changing Room in 1973, for which he won both a Tony and a Drama Desk Award.

When Lithgow did picture research for Drama: An Actor's Education at the Library for the Performing Arts, he was thrilled to see LPA's wealth of photographs documenting his stage career. But he was also pleased as Punch to discover we had material on his father Arthur Lithgow, the director of the McCarter Theatre of Princeton University, and a central figure in his life story.

Lithgow is not only an accomplished actor, but also a poet, musician, and children’s book author. Check out the Library's ebooks and Tumblebooks site for any of these items.

For more depth on Lithgow's career, be sure to visit The New York Public Library's Articles and Databases page for early accounts of Lithgow’s years at Harvard and The McCarter Theatre, as published in such papers as the Boston Globe. More seasoned researchers may already be familiar with the Theatre Division's bound stage reviews dating back to 1917, which contain original Broadway and Off-Broadway reviews culled from a wide range of current and defunct newspapers and magazines, some of which are difficult or impossible to find online.

The Billy Rose Theatre Division also has clipping files on Lithgow, his father, and a majority of the shows they worked on, as well as posters, scrapbooks, original scripts, and even set and costume designs to round out our scope of documentation.

Last, but certainly not least, the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive has in their collection taped performances of A Memory of Two Mondays, Beyond Therapy, M. Butterfly, Secret Service, The Retreat From Moscow, Sweet Smell of Success, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and excerpts from Requiem For a Heavyweight and The Front Page.

We invite your feedback regarding this new "When They Trod the Boards" blog series, as well as your suggestions for future subjects.

Watch the recent the LIVE from the NYPL interview Conversations from the Cullman Center:John Lithgow and Bill Moyers from October 11, 2011.

Library Books on Kindle: A Visual Walkthrough

Lauren Lampasone, Reference and Research Services — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:14:47 -0400

Have you heard? Library books are now available to borrow on Kindle devices and other devices with Kindle reading software (Windows, Mac, Blackberry, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, Windows Phone 7) as well as their Kindle Cloud Reader (read without downloading software in your web browser).

Here is a walkthrough of how it works. (If you're scrolling-averse, check out this video from OverDrive.)

Go to ebooks.nypl.org. Click on the Kindle image on the left! If you're just browsing, try clicking the box marked only show titles with copies available. There was a burst of activity after the announcement yesterday so many books may be unavailable to download now. (You can always put ebooks on hold by clicking Request Item. You'll get an email when the book is available to download.) When you find a book you want, click Add to eList.

Then either click Continue Browsing or Proceed to Checkout. I'm going to check out now!

Enter your library card number and PIN. You have this memorized, right?

Choose the length of lending period you would like. Note that the default is now 14 days! This is to help you get ebooks you have placed on hold more quickly. (You can return manually, if you log into Amazon and go to Manage Your Kindle.) If you need more than 14 days, choose 21. If you need less, choose 7. The ebooks will not be accessible after that time unless you check them out again. Now click on Confirm Check Out.

You're checked out, now click Get for Kindle.

If you're signed into Amazon on your computer, it will recognize you. Make sure you're signed in with the right account. If you're not signed in, just click Get Library Book.

Sign in. If you don't have an account yet, you'll have to create one through I am a new customer. This doesn't require a credit card — just an email address and a password.

Choose where you'd like to have this ebook "delivered." If you've already linked a Kindle or a Kindle app they'll show up in the list here. Then click continue.

Now pop on your device and it should download over your Wi-Fi connection. If you're at the library or another Wi-Fi hotspot, you may have to manually connect first. Go to Menu → Settings → Wi Fi Settings → View → Connect to a network. You may then have to open the browser and follow any prompts on the page for the hotspot location. If the file does not transfer immediately, try going to Menu → Sync & Check for Items.

If you have a 3G model, or no Wi-Fi connection where you are, keep reading.

You can also start reading right in your browser using the Kindle Cloud Reader.

Here's the Kindle Cloud Reader. Do you have the free Know the Past, Find the Future ebook yet? Why not?!

If you, like my colleague Greg, have an older Kindle without Wi-Fi, or you have Internet service at home but no Wi-Fi, there are a couple additional steps to transfer the ebook file from your computer to the device. You'll have the option to download your ebook as a file.

Connect your Kindle to the computer via USB and save the file to the Kindle's Documents folder. There are more images of what that looks like here. If you want to set up additional devices or see what you have checked out at any point, go to Manage Your Kindle.

How much more do you love your Kindle now? Tell us in the comments.

Reader's Den: "Software" by Rudy Rucker (Discussion #4)

Thomas Knowlton, Mid-Manhattan Library, Language and Literature — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 07:12:25 -0400

Thank you for joining us for the June edition of Reader's Den. We hope that you have enjoyed reading (and discussing) Software by Rudy Rucker and that you will return for E.M. Forster's A Room With a View in July!

Some final discussion questions:

What did you think of the ending of Software, specifically the confrontation between Cobb and Sta-Hi?
Did you read the ebook or print version and did this affect your experience of the book?
If you were to recommend the novel to someone else, how would you describe it?

You can keep track of upcoming book discussions with this free, downloadable desktop calendar and help us spread the word with a printable Reader's Den flier.

And don't forgot to follow us on Twitter and Goodreads!

Want to read more cyberpunk this summer? Here are some titles in a similiar vein:

Neuromancer
by William Gibson (1984)

This is generally considered the book that both defined cyberpunk and brought it to the attention of the mainstream and was winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and Philip K. Dick awards.

It follows hacker Henry Dorsett Case and mercernary Molly Millions through the shadowy streets of futuristic dystopia Chiba City, Japan and many of its concepts, such as "cyberspace," prefigure the World Wide Web by almost a decade.

Request a copy from the NYPL catalog

Wetware
by Rudy Rucker (1988)

The sequel to Software gave Rudy Rucker his second Phillip K. Dick award and is set ten years after the events in the first book.

Cobb Anderson and Sta-Hi Mooney (now Stahn Mooney) return, but while there are some similarities to Software, Wetware focuses on bopper Berenice's attempt to populate the Earth with a genetic robot-human hybrid or "meatbop." As a result, the work is sometimes classified as biopunk.

Request a copy from the NYPL catalog
OR
Download the free ebook

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
by Philip K. Dick (1968)

This novel (and the Ridley Scott film adaptation Blade Runner) are two more hugely influential cyberpunk works.

In a world full of androids and synthetic animals that are nearly indiscernable from their organic counterparts, the book explores the question of what it means to be human through the eyes of android hunter Rick Deckard.

Request a copy from the NYPL catalog

This online book discussion is part of Sci-Fi Summer Reading 2011. Find more science fiction-themed programming at bit.ly/scifisummer.

Reader's Den: "Software" by Rudy Rucker (Discussion #3)

Thomas Knowlton, Mid-Manhattan Library, Language and Literature — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:46:22 -0400

For our third installment of this month's Reader's Den, let's take a look at what Rudy Rucker's Software has to say about humans, technology, and what it means to exist.

In several places in the text, the author explores the idea of software being analogous to the soul. When Sta-Hi meets an attractive robot-remote stewardess on his way to the moon, she gives him a crash course in this new, technological metaphysics:

"You wanted to know who I am. I gave you one answer. A robot-remote. A servo-unit operated by a program stored in a bopper spaceship. But... I'm still Misty-girl, too. The soul is the software, you know. The soft ware is what counts, the habits and the memories. The brain and the body are just meat, seeds for the organ-tanks."

Adding further complexity to the issue of whether a robot can be considered alive is the issue of free will. While Misty-girl appears to act under her own agency, she is nevertheless tied to BEX, the big bopper where her brain tapes are stored.

In another, later scene in the novel, Cobb (whose consciousness has since been implanted in a robotic body) attempts to justify the death of Sta-Hi's father:

"A person is just hardware plus software plus existence. Me existing in flesh is the same as me existing on chips. But that's not all. Potential existence is as good as actual existence. That's why death is impossible. Your software exists permanently and indestructibly as a certain possibility, a certain mathematical set of relations. Your father is now an abstract, non-physical possibility. But nevertheless he exists!"

It seems that Cobb's new self has come to believe in a kind of immortality, made possible through science and technology, to the point where death is merely an abstraction that can be explained away.

Finally, in one of the most poetic and striking passages in Software, Cobb "reawakens" in his new robot body to a fragmented data stream of memories from his past life:

This sort of problem, however, was only a small part of Cobb’s confusion, only the tip of the iceberg, the edge of the wedge, the snout of the camel, the first crocus of spring, the last rose of summer, the ant and the grasshopper, the little engine that could, the third sailor in the whorehouse, the Cthulhu Mythos, the neural net, two scoops of green ice-cream, a broken pane of glass, Borges’s essay on time, the year 1982, the state of Florida, Turing’s imitation game, a stuffed platypus, the smell of Annie Cushing’s body, an age-spot shaped like Australia, the cool moistness of an evening in March, the Bell inequality, the taste of candied violets, a chest-pain like a steel cylinder, Aquinas’s definition of God, the smell of black ink, two lovers seen out a window, the clack of typing, the white moons on fingernails, the world as construct, rotten fish bait on a wooden dock, the fear of the self that fears, aloneness, maybe, yes and no...

While the idea of human consciousness existing within a synthetic body might seem abhorrent or even impossible to some, the above paragraph provides a whimsical conjecture of what such an existence might be.

Discussion questions:

Would you agree that a person is simply "hardware plus sofware plus existence" or is there something more?
Do you think immortality will ever be possible through science?
What are some of your favorite passages from the book?

This online book discussion is part of Sci-Fi Summer Reading 2011. Find more science fiction-themed programming at bit.ly/scifisummer.

Reader's Den: "Software" by Rudy Rucker (Discussion #2)

Thomas Knowlton, Mid-Manhattan Library, Language and Literature — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 08:37:21 -0400

Thanks for tuning in for the second discussion of Reader's Den for June! This month we are discussing the science fiction classic Software by Rudy Rucker, which is the first book in The Ware Tetralogy.

This book exemplifies a style of writing Rucker has termed "transrealism." In his 1983 Transrealist Manifesto, he argues that the tropes of science fiction can be viewed as symbols for the "modes of perception," i.e. time travel can be seen as memory, while telepathy can be viewed as unfettered communication between two individuals.

Another important aspect to this approach is the way in which the author incorporates autobiographical details into the work. For instance, the character of Cobb Anderson is loosely based on the writer's father, who had recently suffered a heart attack, undergone bypass surgery, and subsequently left his wife for another woman at the age of 60. Rucker describes how, in many ways, writing this character was a way to "inoculate" himself from ending up like his father, who was haunted by thoughts of death, drank heavily, and was estranged from his family.

Sta-Hi Mooney, another key character in the book, is based on the author's friend Dennis, who he remembers as having "no internal censor." His fictional counterpart constantly speaks in slang, using terms like wiggly, stuzzy, and come shot! The text also abounds with curious words like pheezers (freaky geezers who fled to Florida after the collapse of social security in 2010), boppers (evolved, self-aware robots), and flickercladding (an insulating armor designed to protect temperature-sensitive circuitry).

This melding of the imaginary and the real is something found in almost every work of fiction. However, such autobiographical specificity calls to mind Philip K. Dick's Radio Free Albemuth, which rather consciously blurs the line between fact and fiction.

Discussion questions:

Have you come across any other works that might be considered "transrealist"? Also, do you think science fiction is generally more or less realistic than other genres?
Cobb Anderson, Sta-Hi Mooney, Ralph Numbers, and the Little Kidders are just some of the memorable characters that populate the book. Do you relate to any of them in particular and/or does it change your assessment to know that some of them are based on real people from the author's life?
Did you find the language of the novel (such as slang words or terms for futuristic technology) easy to follow or distracting throughout the text?

This online book discussion is part of Sci-Fi Summer Reading 2011. Find more science fiction-themed programming at bit.ly/scifisummer.

Reader's Den: "Software" by Rudy Rucker (Discussion #1)

Thomas Knowlton, Mid-Manhattan Library, Language and Literature — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 06:53:43 -0400

Welcome to the June edition of Reader's Den at The New York Public Library!

This month we will discuss Rudy Rucker's Software (1982), the first book in the Ware Tetralogy science fiction series, which also includes Wetware (1988), Freeware (1997), and Realware (2000).

To participate, simply request a print copy through the NYPL Catalog or download a free, Creative Commons-licensed ebook (available in Kindle, Nook, and Sony eReader formats).

Software was the very first winner of the Philip K. Dick Award in 1983 and is considered a cyberpunk classic. While the melding of high-tech futurism and gritty counterculture may seem commonplace today, Rucker's novel marks a growing movement that did not yet include the influential Philip K. Dick adaptation Blade Runner (1982) or William Gibson's genre-defining Neuromancer (1984).

Below are some discussion questions to help us get started, but feel free to comment on other things you notice about the book as well!

Rudy Rucker is often compared to Philip K. Dick. Do you see similarities between the two writers?
Are you familiar with the term "cyberpunk" and have you come across other works (books, movies, video games, etc.) that fall under this genre?
The author has stated that he took the title Software from a 1979 issue of Scientific American, but at the time it was not a widely-used term or concept. Does the technology in the novel still seem futuristic to you or, conversely, does it seem dated 30 years later?

This online book discussion is part of Sci-Fi Summer Reading 2011 and you can find even more science fiction-themed programming at bit.ly/scifisummer.

Old Tales, New Twists: A Fantasy eBook List

Emma Carbone, Epiphany Library — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 06:38:30 -0500

Do you have an eReader? Is part of the appeal that it looks like you're living in the future? Have you found yourself wishing for more fantastical books to match your futuristic reading device?

Look no further.

The premises might sound familiar but these books all take traditional story elements and turn them upside down. And you can get them on your ereader for free right here.

Fly on the Wall by E. Lockhart
For Gretchen Yee, life as an artificial red head is anything but glamorous, especially when she feels too ordinary to fit in at her artsy high school. But it turns out life as a vermin, specifically as a fly on the wall of the boys locker room, is even worse. But after a week maybe Gretchen will have learned enough to live life as a superhero instead.
Available in EPUB

How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier
Living in New Avalon and having your own personal fairy should be awesome. But for Charlie, it totally sucks. Charlie doesn't have a cool fairy to help her find nice clothes, or one to improve her grades, or make boys like her. Charlie is too young to drive, but she has a parking fairy. And she is going to get rid of it if it's the last thing she does.
Available in EPUB

Magic Under Glass by Jacklyn Dolamore
Nimira came to Lorinar to seek her fortune, but instead she finds seedy music halls and natives who treat her like foreign trash. When a handsome sorcerer offers Nimira work singing with a mysterious automaton he may also be giving her the key to her happiness. If only she can discover the automaton's secrets…
Available in EPUB

Peeps by Scott Westerfeld
Cal Thompson lives in a world where vampires are real—well, sort of real. Parasite positives, "Peeps" for short, start to hate sunlight and everything they once loved. And they crave human blood. Cal is a carrier for the parasite and part of an organization dedicated to hunting Peeps down.
Available in EPUB, PDF, and Mobipocket

Sabriel by Garth Nix
When her father, the Abhorsen, becomes trapped in Death, Sabriel has to assume her rightful duties as the next Abhorsen and save him, and perhaps many others, from the dead that would keep him and claim the world of the living for themselves.
Available in PDF and Mobipocket

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
Gen can steal anything. At least he can when he isn't locked in the king's prison. It's a terrible risk, but if Gen can steal a hidden artifact he might be able to win his freedom and something more.
Available in EPUB

Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier
Each full moon, Jena and her sisters cross the wildwood to visit the enchanted glade of the Other Realm for a night of dancing and revelry. Everyone knows the wildwood is a dangerous place filled with witches, ghosts and all manner of other worldly creatures—and the lake that claimed Jena’s cousin years ago. But no harm can come from dancing. Or can it?
 Available in PDF

2010 New York Times Bestselling Young Adult Books: Free Downloads for Your eReader

Marie C. Hansen, Jefferson Market Library — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 06:13:15 -0500

Did you get an eReader for the holidays? If so, here are some digital versions of popular YA books you might want to check out.

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
Samantha Kingston has it all, a hot boyfriend, popularity, and three best friends—but after a wild party, she loses the most important thing: her life.
Available in EPUB

The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell
Carrie Bradshaw, before New York City, journalism, and cosmos.
Available in EPUB

Pretty Little Liars by Sara Shepard
The book that started the TV show… (See also Robyn's post.)
Available in PDF and Mobipocket

Torment by Lauren Kate
The follow up to Fallen. Luce and her fallen angel boyfriend, Daniel— Is it really true love?
Available in EPUB

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
Two boys, one name, paths crossed. (See also Ryan's post.)
Available in EPUB and PDF

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
A box of tapes, a suicide.
Available in PDF and Mobipocket

Ebooks: Putting the "E" in Free

Brooke Watkins, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, General Research Division — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 07:44:59 -0500

A friend of mine has recently taken to reading Moby Dick on her phone, using the Kindle for Android app. Although I like to make fun of her for reading such a formidable book on a tiny screen, she is adamant that her method is much less intimidating, because she doesn’t have to 1) lug the book around, or 2) face its visible girth, taunting her daily with unread pages. No matter your feelings on print v. electronic books, the classics, as well as the not-so-classics, are on the Web and ready to download to your computer and portable e-reading device for free.

1923 is the red-letter year for establishing books as out-of-copyright and in the public domain in the United States. While there are books published after 1923 whose copyright has expired, your best bet for finding a free ebook is to look for older volumes. (And for those of you interested in why copyright lasts as long as it does, Duke University Law School’s Center for the Study of Public Domain discusses this quite well.)

But where, oh where, to find Melville for free? Maybe you’ve noticed the free ebooks at online booksellers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble who sell (or in this case, give away) in formats specific to their gadgets (the Kindle, the Nook). However, the easiest places to find massive amounts of downloadable free ebooks - many of them obscure - is at Google Books, Project Gutenberg, or (my personal favorite) the Internet Archive.

At Google Books, use the advanced search option and select the “full view only” radio button to retrieve fulltext ebooks. If the books are in the public domain, you can download them in .pdf and oftentimes .epub formats (the ebook standard) for your e-readers, as well as download them using the Google ebooks app for your Android or iPhone/iPad. You can also search the New York Public Library catalog for books from our collection digitized as part of the Google Books Project.

Project Gutenberg is the oldest digital library - founded in 1971(!) by Michael Hart, who basically invented the ebook. This site contains over 30 thousand titles, downloadable in multiple formats, including .epub and .amz for Kindle. Project Gutenberg also offers free audio versions of its texts, computer-generated and human-read.

The Internet Archive holds over 2.6 million ebooks and texts (as well as archives for audio, live music, moving images, and the Internet itself). Not only does it contain a gigantic collection of public domain books, it also offers an impressive choice of formats, a well-designed web reader for when you want an immediate peek at the book, and great metadata. The records include extensive publication information and notes, as well as provenance (i.e. where the book came from). Here you can see a list of all books from the New York Public Library. We have our fingers in many pies!

What if public domain books are all fine and good, but you just want to read the latest literary sensation or self-help book or financial guide? The New York Public Library offers a good and growing selection of downloadable ebooks for loan on our website - all you need is a library card to download them. And if you’re flummoxed by the world of gadgets, software, formats, and digital rights management that makes ebooks possible, I will be teaching a free class at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on January 25 @ 3:15 on how to navigate this relatively new realm. Come on by and download with confidence, and bring your laptop to get started immediately.

And happy reading - no matter what format you're into! (I am currently reading (i.e. lugging around) Adam Levin’s 1030-page novel The Instructions, a hilarious, maximalist epic, but I'm beginning to think I should have bitten the bullet and bought it electronically - especially now that I know it won’t be saving me from real bullets any time soon.)