For this thing I explored a couple of the apps available at my library. I'm not a huge ebook user so this was a good chance for me to get a little more experience with what we have to offer.
The first one I tried (or re-tried) was Zinio. This is a great place to read magazines on your tablet or PC. For free. I was super excited when we first got this app. I love magazines, but I don't like to pay the increasingly high prices for them at the store. My enthusiasm diminished somewhat after playing around with it. It is not a very intuitive app to use, so I haven't done much with it for a couple months. I decided to give it another try.
What makes this app a little frustrating to use is that you need to set up two account, one at the library's page and another in Zinio. After that, you need to remember to first search and check out your magazine at the library's page then go to the Zinio app to download and read it. If you forget and search for it in Zinio, it will want to charge you for it. It took me awhile to get the hang of it. After playing around with it and getting everything figured out, I really like it. It's just frustrating to learn.
Also, I couldn't get any magazines to download to my Kindle Fire or a co-worker's Kindle Fire. I don't know why. But it worked great on the Nexus.
Next up was the 3M Cloud Library. I up an account when we first got this, but that was longer ago than I care to admit. Fortunately it wasn't hard to log in and start searching around. I looked at the shelves by category, since I didn't want anything in particular. Unfortunately some of the titles were already checked out, so I'd have to go on a waiting list. Most of them I didn't bother. The lists were so long, I think I would have gotten the book sometime next year. One of the drawbacks to only having a single copy available for checkout. I found a random book that only had a waiting time of two weeks and quickly put my name on the list for it. Pretty easy to do. I like that. It was little tricky finding where I could check the books in early. Which is a question I've been asked by patrons in the past and I was unable to help them. At least not effectively. Now I can actually show them how to do it. Yay!
New at the library is Pronunciator. This is an app to help you learn or brush up on foreign languages. I haven't gotten farther than creating an account yet. But it looks neat.
The first one I tried (or re-tried) was Zinio. This is a great place to read magazines on your tablet or PC. For free. I was super excited when we first got this app. I love magazines, but I don't like to pay the increasingly high prices for them at the store. My enthusiasm diminished somewhat after playing around with it. It is not a very intuitive app to use, so I haven't done much with it for a couple months. I decided to give it another try.
What makes this app a little frustrating to use is that you need to set up two account, one at the library's page and another in Zinio. After that, you need to remember to first search and check out your magazine at the library's page then go to the Zinio app to download and read it. If you forget and search for it in Zinio, it will want to charge you for it. It took me awhile to get the hang of it. After playing around with it and getting everything figured out, I really like it. It's just frustrating to learn.
Also, I couldn't get any magazines to download to my Kindle Fire or a co-worker's Kindle Fire. I don't know why. But it worked great on the Nexus.
Next up was the 3M Cloud Library. I up an account when we first got this, but that was longer ago than I care to admit. Fortunately it wasn't hard to log in and start searching around. I looked at the shelves by category, since I didn't want anything in particular. Unfortunately some of the titles were already checked out, so I'd have to go on a waiting list. Most of them I didn't bother. The lists were so long, I think I would have gotten the book sometime next year. One of the drawbacks to only having a single copy available for checkout. I found a random book that only had a waiting time of two weeks and quickly put my name on the list for it. Pretty easy to do. I like that. It was little tricky finding where I could check the books in early. Which is a question I've been asked by patrons in the past and I was unable to help them. At least not effectively. Now I can actually show them how to do it. Yay!
New at the library is Pronunciator. This is an app to help you learn or brush up on foreign languages. I haven't gotten farther than creating an account yet. But it looks neat.
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