by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian
We have a new source for electronic magazines and newspapers,
and I hope you’ll like the change.
Until recently, Pioneerland Library System used to get
e-magazines through Zinio. If you’re a
regular user of those, you’ll notice that you won’t be able to check those out with
your library card anymore. We now have a
contract with Overdrive, the company that provides our e-books. Pioneerland is offering 41 popular magazines
and newspapers.
To find them, go to our Overdrive site, the same way you
would for e-books, and you’ll now see magazines at the top of the available
items. Or you can go to our library catalog and click on “Download eMagazines” on the bottom left of the page to
see only the magazines, not books.
For a guide to how to check these out and download them, look
for the link at the top of the e-books webpage.
It says “We’ve got periodicals!
Learn more here.” If you click on
that link, you’ll get a step-by-step guide on how to use these new e-magazines.
The most important thing to know is that these magazines
come in Nook format, which is the Barnes & Noble electronic format. This means you need a Nook tablet or a Nook
app to get them, as well as a Barnes & Noble account. The app and the account are free, and borrowing
the magazines is free, too.
These magazines do not currently work on a Kindle, which is
an Amazon device. This may change in the
future.
If you have an iPad, iPhone, Android device, or another device
that is not a Nook or a Kindle, go to your app store, search for the free Nook
reading app, and install it on your device.
You can also get the Nook app for Windows 8 computers, so that you can
read these on your laptop or desktop computer. Once you have the software, go
to our Overdrive website and choose a magazine to send to the Nook app.
A few things happen the first time you check out a
magazine. The app will ask you to
acknowledge that you need to link it to your Barnes & Noble account. You’ll need to put in your library card
number. Then you’ll need to sign in with
your Barnes & Noble account, or create one, and grant access to it. You won’t have to do all of this again once
you get it set up.
At this point, the magazine will be sent to your Nook
account. Barnes & Noble offers
in-store support for checking out these magazines, so you can visit the St.
Cloud store or another location if you need tech support.
E-magazines are different than e-books, in that multiple
people can check out an issue at one time, and you never have to return an
e-magazine. You can’t go back and get
older issues of these magazines, only the current issue, but once you have one
you can keep it on your device as long as you want.
Sometimes you can use the library from the comfort of
home. Borrow current issues of National
Geographic, USA Today, Readers Digest, and many more, just by using the library
through your tablet or phone.
