With the closures of local libraries due to the current pandemic, book lovers experience what Concepción de León called ‘literary withdrawal‘. However, this does not have to be a crippling condition as there are several other ways to circumvent the physical visit to the library. One important way is through the use of online services to borrow items from your local libraries. There are now several apps that allow you to connect to your local library and get started reading, listening, and/or watching borrowed content. Here are two apps Concepción de León recommended in her interesting article” how to get books when bookstores and libraries are closed“.
1- Libby
Libby is probably one of the best apps out there that allows you to instantly borrow audiobooks, magazines and ebooks from local libraries. Libby is designed by the folks at OneDrive and offers a wide variety of features including the ability to download titles for offline reading, organize book collections using tags, sync your reading position across different devices, built-in dictionary and search functionality, the ability to add bookmarks, notes and highlights, adjust text size and background color and many more.
2- Hoopla
Another excellent app to use to borrow various items from local libraries including, audiobooks, movies, music, comics, TV shows, and eBooks. The app embeds over 800.000 titles ‘from best-selling novels and blockbuster movies to niche, hard-to find content’. Other features it provides include the ability to stream or download for offline reading, watching, and listening, synchronize your reading positions across multiple devices, and many more.
