March 15, 2025 • 24 mins
The Distracted Librarians get techy! On today's episode, Nicole, Drew, Killian, and Amanda discuss ways to access your favorite content online through the library, as well as amazing databases you might not know you have access to with your library card.
Want to join the conversation? Email us at distracted@btpl.org
Many thanks to BCTV for their support in recording, editing, and releasing this podcast; and to the Friends of the Library for sponsoring closed captioning on every episode.
#LibraryPodcast #BookPodcast #BloomfieldTownship
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
- (Nicole) Hey there.
Welcome to the "DistractedLibrarians" podcast.
We are your friendlyneighborhood bookworms
with a penchant forall things pop culture.
- (Drew) Picture thisas our digital campfire
where we dive into our latest obsessions,
analyze our favorite distractions,
and rediscover the joy of reading.
- (Killian) Whether you're amedia enthusiast, a book lover,
(00:21):
or just need a break from the daily grind,
you've come to the right spot.
- (Amanda) So kick back, relax,
and get delightfully distracted with us.
- (Nicole) Hey everybody,today we are going to be
talking about digital anddownloadable tools at the library.
My name is Nicole.
- (Amanda) I'm Amanda.
(00:41):
- (Killian) I'm Killian.
- (Drew) I'm Drew.
- (Nicole) All right, so we have a lot of
really wonderful resources at the library
and we're gonna talk aboutsome of those today. (laughs)
So let's break this down a little bit.
Digital collections and platforms.
What are some of the things that we have
(01:01):
available for patrons?
- (Drew) I mean, I use Libby constantly.
- (Killian) I use Libby constantly.
I also buy all of theyouth collection for Libby,
both for eBooks and the audiobooks.
So it is easily the one thatI am most familiar with,
just because I work with it so much,
both personally and professionally.
(01:21):
- (Nicole) And so, Libbyis run by OverDrive.
And it has a coupledifferent types of resources.
- (Killian) Yeah, we haveeBooks, we have audiobooks.
It used to have some video stuff on there,
but when it's OverDrive thatmerged with Kanopy, correct?
- (Drew) Right, yeah,OverDrive bought Kanopy.
- (Killian) So OverDrive bought Kanopy
(01:43):
and there's not as muchvideo on there now,
but all of our magazines are on OverDrive.
Our digital magazines.
- (Nicole) Oh, okay.
- (Killian) Are on OverDrive now, so.
- (Nicole) Gotcha.
- (Killian) And therefore on Libby.
- (Nicole) Okay, and thenwe have, Hoopla is available
to us as well. And Hoopla isalso eBooks and audiobooks
(02:04):
that are available. And movies.
- (Amanda) Oh, and movies.
And TV shows and music.
And so it's got like awhole bunch of stuff.
- (Nicole) Oh, and comics.
I forgot about that, yeah.
Oh yeah, that's right.
- (Drew) Easily our broadest database.
- (Nicole) Okay, now thedifference between the two
is that one is similar to the library.
I like to look at it
as like if the book ison the library shelf,
(02:24):
therefore it's available.
So there's one copyavailable that is checked out
and then you can be puton hold for that item.
And that's Libby?
- (Killian) Yes and no.
Originally, yes, that was very much,
there's differentcirculation models for each.
And as Hoopla has become acompetitor for OverDrive,
(02:48):
OverDrive has startedmaking, being able to offer
some of its items
as a similar model to Hoopla.
So they have some ways wherethere's unlimited copies
and it tracks the numberof copies that checkout.
But you're not gonna seeholds on Hoopla the way you do
(03:08):
with most things out there, right?
- (Drew) The other big difference
is that we do the purchasing for Libby,
either us or the cooperativethat we're part of.
Whereas Hoopla we buy into the platform,
but we don't really haveinfluence on what's in it.
And we can choose to removethings from the collection.
I don't think we ever did.
(03:29):
But you know, the option is there
to take things off the batch list,
but we can't add things on there.
- (Killian) There's no collectiondevelopment and selection
put into the Hoopla collection.
It's whatever the company that owns it-
- (Nicole) Decides to purchase.
- (Killian) ... has made deals for.
(03:50):
Whereas, like I said,
I do the youth collection for OverDrive.
I go in and I select every item
that is in that collectionfor our libraries' collection.
We do have access to otherlibraries collections
through the cooperative.
And then our cooperative has-
- (Drew) Reciprocity.
- (Killian) ... lending agreement
(04:11):
with other cooperatives
around the state of Michigan as well.
So you can actually log intothose with your card from us
and checkout from there as well.
- (Nicole) Very nice.
I really like Hoopla, 'causeit has weird stuff on it.
- (Killian) Hoopla doeshave some out there.
- (Nicole) It's very weird.
I don't know, I'm kind of interested in
supernatural and magic stuff.
So there is like a huge resource
(04:33):
of those type of books on Hoopla,
which I feel like itwould be very difficult
to get somewhere elsewithout having to pay for it.
So I use Hoopla prettyregularly for those items.
- (Drew) Hoopla's alsomade a lot of, you know,
infrastructure changesrecently that I love.
Their audio player is so muchbetter than it used to be.
(04:54):
- (Nicole) Their graphicnovel or their comic reader is
so nice. I love it, becauseyou can click on a box
that's available on the pageand it makes it super-big
and then it just lets youkind of scroll through
each box individuallyinstead of trying to squint
at each little word on the page.
(05:15):
- (Killian) That's so good to know,
because I don't do digital comics often,
because they can be,
so difficult to read.- (Nicole) It's hard to read.
Yeah, no, but Hoopla,
if you click on the box,it'll blow it up for you
and then you're just flippingthrough the little boxes
one by one.
Yeah, it's really nice.- (Killian) Well, I've learned
something today.
- (Drew) I think, ComicsPlus does that too.
- (Nicole) Okay, that's cool.
(05:37):
- (Drew) And Comics Plus, weliterally just got, you know,
three, four months ago.
- (Nicole) Oh, and I don't knowvery much about that either.
- (Drew) It'll be six monthsby the time this comes out,
but it's brand, brand new access point.
It seems really cool so far.
- (Nicole) Now we've had a discussion
about graphic novels versus comics.
Is it true to comics
(05:58):
or do you think thatthere's graphic novels
thrown in there as well?
- (Drew) No, there aregraphic novels in there too.
- (Nicole) Oh, there are, okay. Cool.
- (Drew) There's graphic novels.
It's got a decent manga collection.
- (Nicole) Oh, nice.
- (Drew) It was one of the reasons
we wanted to go for it in the first place.
- (Killian) Okay, that's good to know,
'cause I get so many kidsin our department coming in
looking for manga
and we don't have a ton
in the youth graphic novel collection.
I know there's more overin Teen that you buy for.
(06:20):
- (Drew) We're working on it.
- (Killian) But, so a lotof times we'll be like,
we have some, it's mixed in over here,
but most of what you're lookingfor is gonna be in Teen.
But being able to know thatthere's a good collection there.
I can send people there now.
- (Nicole) Yeah, very nice.
- (Drew) All the things.
- (Killian) Love learningnew things about our library.
- (Nicole) Okay, well, let'stalk about Kanopy a little bit.
(06:41):
- (Amanda) So Kanopyis a streaming service.
So you can think of it
like a smaller version of Netflix.
You can download it as an app
or you can view it in a web browser.
And it sort of specializes in movies
that might be lesser known.
(07:01):
So they might be your art house films,
your Criterion collection,your foreign films.
Lots of documentaries.
- (Nicole) I was gonna say,when I looked, I was like,
"Oh, there's a lot ofdocumentaries on here."
- (Drew) It started life as aservice for academic libraries
that only had databasesor documentaries on it.
(07:21):
- (Nicole) Oh, okay.- (Drew) And then in only
in recent years, they'vestarted making partnership deals
with film production companies.
So they get the newer A24 film releases,
they're like classic Paramount pictures.
- (Nicole) Oh, okay.
- (Drew) So it's onlyin the last, you know,
five years or so thatthey've expanded into
more of what the publicwould be looking for.
- (Nicole) Cool, all right.
(07:42):
And what is Freegal?
- (Nicole) We don't have Freegal anymore.
- (Killian) No, we don'thave Freegal anymore.
- It was a music-based one.
It was not getting used, sothat got cut a while back.
- (Nicole) Well, just kidding.
Then we're not gonna talkabout Freegal at all.
- (Drew) We did veryrecently add myfilmfriend.
When we signed up for it,
we were one of seven or eightlibraries in the country
(08:03):
to have it.
And it is all foreign films.
- (Nicole) Oh, that's cool.
- (Drew) It's a really, really fun deal.
- (Nicole) Yeah, nice.
- (Drew) It's not a strong collection yet,
but they're literally just starting.
It's cool to be on the ground floor of it.
And it's something that our patrons
from purchasing the DVDs really go for
(08:23):
is our foreign film collection.
So we were excited to offer that as well.
- (Nicole) Awesome, all right.
Well, I know in YouthServices we also have
some really great offeringsthat are available to patrons.
We have ABCmouse, whichis an educational tool
that is kind of a fun learning app
(08:46):
that some of the schoolsalso recommend for kids.
And there's games andthere's a point system
and you can use yourpoints to buy hamsters
and hamster wheels.
And so at least that's whatmy kids were doing with it.
- (Drew) Absolutely, sign me up.
- (Nicole) There's, youknow, it's like educational,
but then there's also kind of like this
(09:08):
very fun game element to it.
So ABCmouse is available.
That's the only one Ibelieve that you can only use
inside of the library though.
- (Killian) I think so, yeah.- (Drew) ABCmouse.
So if that's something thatyou're interested in using,
just come on into the library
and check it out on one of our computers.
Okay, and then we also have BookFlix.
(09:30):
Killian, do you wanna talk about BookFlix?
- (Killian) BookFlix kindof pairs eBooks and video.
So a lot of it is very educational content
where you're getting eBooks about a topic
and then video kind of showing things
and using, you know, video of, you know,
if it's the topic is butterflies,
(09:50):
you're getting video of butterflies,
you might get like a graphic showing
the parts of a butterfly,things like that.
Just different ways to expand learning
from just that reading-based literacy
to also media-based literacy.
- (Nicole) And if I recallcorrectly, that was something
that I was using duringlockdown, during COVID
(10:12):
just for homeschooling my kids
and it was a great resource.- (Drew) Nice.
- (Nicole) Just because, oh my gosh,
today we're talking about space.
How am I gonna do that?
I could go on BookFlix
and it would give me kindof a canned curriculum
for littler kids, yeah.
- (Nicole) Okay, we alsohave some foreign language
(10:33):
study programs that are available,
like Little Pim and Mango Languages.
That's available on our website.
All of these things areavailable on our website.
- (Killian) Yeah, Little Pimis the children's version,
and then Mango Language is kind of Adult.
And I mean, Teen probablywould make more sense
(10:55):
for Mango Languages too.
But there's a lot of reallygreat stuff on there.
And I know a lot of people
use other language learningapps and everything,
but this is one thatyou have free access to
through the library, so-
- (Nicole) Totally.
- (Killian) ... you can double up.
- (Drew) I love Mango.
It has 70 languages on it.
(11:15):
I like promoting it every September,
because it also has pirate speak on there.
- (Nicole) That's fantastic.
- (Drew) And one of the days in September
is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
- (Nicole) So you just have to have it.
- (Drew) Yeah, exactly.
It's a fun thing to promote there,
but it's a really, reallygood integration service
where it does video and audio
(11:36):
and it records you speaking back to it
to really try and get youthe classroom experience
in so far as it can.- (Nicole) Nice.
- (Drew) It's a good service.- (Nicole) Yeah, definitely.
Scholastic Teachables isnew to us at the library.
This is great for peoplethat are educators.
(11:58):
So we've been talking tothe local school district
about Scholastic Teachables,
because there are worksheetsthat are available.
There's tons of resourcesthat are there for teachers.
And this is also another good one
for homeschooling families.
It just makes it easier,
'cause you don't have to makeeverything up from scratch
(12:19):
and they're allage-appropriate for the grade
and all of that too.
And then we also haveTumbleBooks and TumbleMath.
TumbleBooks I believe, isn't it like a,
it reads the books to you?
- (Killian) It's an eBook platform.
Some of them have read along.
That read along formatis kind of just a format
(12:42):
that different things have,
you can find read alongbooks on Libby as well.
But TumbleBooks has a lot of eBooks,
but it also has some gamesthat are on that site as well.
There's a bunch ofeducational content really
for kids on there.
- (Nicole) So for reading and math.
- (Killian) And a bunchof different formats.
And we have TumbleMath as well,
which goes into a lot of math concepts.
(13:04):
- (Nicole) Okay, cool.
All right, what's going onin Adult Services and Teen?
- (Drew) We've got a lot of fun ones.
One of my personalfavorites is Creative Bug.
- (Nicole) I love Creative Bug.
- (Drew) It's a really,really cool service.
We use it for a lot of ourtake and make craft kits
to get ideas.
But it's really just thismassive crafting site
(13:25):
where you can put in the type of crafting
that you want to do,
or the outcome of whateveryou want to have created.
And it will give you, youknow, step-by-step guides
to what tools and materials you need.
- (Nicole) The videos are great.
- (Drew) The videos are great.
- (Nicole) The teachers are really good.
It's super-fun.
(13:46):
And it's a subscription-based service.
So if you were trying toaccess this from home,
not through the library,it would cost money.
I believe it's either monthly or yearly.
And it's just a nice thing that we offer.
- (Drew) A fair few ofour databases are ones
that would be subscriptionservices if you wanted to
go at it from an individual angle.
(14:08):
But the library has institutional access
for everyone who is a card holder
or who are in the buildingwhen they're accessing it.
So that applies to, you know,a lot of our newspapers,
it applies to consumer reports
where it's really justlike an access point.
(14:29):
- (Nicole) Okay.
- (Killian) I love that, oneof the most annoying things
to me is being on FaceBook or whatever,
scrolling through someone'sposted a newspaper article,
you click it and it's like,
this is behind a paywall.
But now, some of those Ican get through the library,
which is great.
- (Amanda) Yeah, one ofthe ones that we offer
is also LinkedIn Learning.
(14:50):
So as you'd imagine with LinkedIn
it is more about careerreadiness or career development.
So that would be a greatone if you want to learn
how to use Excel or if youwant to learn how to use Word.
So that's a really nice one.
And there are also video tutorials.
(15:14):
So you're gonna be getting video tutorials
with sort of nice little modulesto walk the learner through
what they're interested in.
- (Drew) Yeah, they breakthem into 2-5 minute modules.
You can go through and pickout exactly what you want,
'cause a lot of those videosend up four hours long.
- (Nicole) Oh wow, yeah.
(15:35):
- (Drew) To give you the broad overview,
but they also break it downreally, really smoothly.
They have transcripts, theyhave exercise handouts.
It's a whole thing.- (Nicole) Hmm, wow.
- (Drew) One that I reallylike using is Novelist.
It's the one I use the most,
to work as a reader's advisory type deal.
(15:55):
So it is sort of a Goodreads type deal,
not in the logging books,but in book information.
So you can look up any title.
It has a really, reallybroad database of them
and it will give you, youknow, recommended reader,
age ranges, descriptions of the book,
(16:15):
a breakdown of categories,
and it'll also give title,author and series read-a-likes.
- (Killian) And so, if you'veever been in our catalog
and looked something up
and you will see suggestions
for other things you might likeat the bottom of that page.
That's where that comes from.
It's integrated into our catalog,
(16:36):
so that you can find those read-a-likes.
- (Amanda) Cool.
Another one we have is Consumer Reports.
So most people know ConsumerReports from the magazine.
It tells you what is a goodproduct, what is a good brand.
They have ratings on them, prosand cons, comparison sheets
(16:58):
of say, like a vacuum or a dehumidifier,
which is super-useful.
- (Killian) It's super-useful, absolutely.
- (Nicole) I use it quite a bit.
- (Amanda) Yeah, so thisis your online version.
You can access it from home.
It's just really helpful,
because I think if youwere to buy every addition,
(17:19):
it gets quite pricey, but in this case,
the library is paying for it for you.
Yay.
- (Amanda) And that pairssuper-well with the library,
having the ConsumerReports magazines in-house.
- Totally, yeah.
So you can look it up online
or you can come in and view it in-person.
Maybe make a photocopy of thatone, you know, vacuum article
(17:43):
as you're trying tofind the perfect vacuum.
- (Nicole) So, oh my goodness.
- (Drew) Yeah, I thinkone database that is,
you have to be in thelibrary to use, is Ancestry?
- (Amanda) Correct.- (Nicole) Yeah.
- (Killian) Yeah.- (Drew) So Ancestry, we have
in-library access
and it's again to the full service.
So there's nothing specialabout the library access point,
(18:06):
except that it's free for library patrons.
So you would have to come into the library
and either be on our wifi orbe on one of our computers.
But then you get full access to
all of the genealogical thingsthat Ancestry has to offer.
You know, genealogy isthis huge deal right now.
We're doing programsfor it every other month
with the Historical Society.
(18:26):
- (Nicole) Oh, okay, that's cool.
I found some good stuff on there,
so, I think it's interesting, yeah.
- (Killian) Yeah, so I'vemessed around on there before
and it's a lot of fun.
So it's nice to havethat definitely access
without having to pay for it.
- (Amanda) I found out my grandpa
was married an additional time,
(18:48):
so that was sort of fun.
I don't know if my mom knew or not,
(group laughs)
but you'll never know what you find out.
So yes, Ancestry has worked.
- (Drew) Things to bring upat the Thanksgiving table.
(group laughs)
- (Nicole) All right,do we have anything else
for Adult and Teen Services,or is that all good?
(19:10):
- (Drew) And we have tons of databases
between the ones that we purchase into
and the ones that we getfrom being associated
with the Library of Michigan.
That database's page scrollsand scrolls and scrolls.
- (Nicole) Yeah, and so thatgoes for both Adult and Teen
and Youth Services.
These are just a couple of our favorites,
but there's a big long list of things
(19:31):
that are available to patrons.
- (Killian) Yeah, a lot of great resources
for kids writing papers for school.
Things like that
that are solid sources
for those papers as well.
- (Drew) We have access to thefull Gale and EBSCO databases
for, you know, general research as well.
(19:52):
We're talking about the fun ones.
But we do have
the more academically-mindeddatabases as well.
- (Nicole) Definitely.
There is also a tutoring appcalled HelpNow by Brainfuse.
And I believe that that is,
you have access to a one-on-onetutor situation with that,
(20:13):
which is kind of great for,
we have families that comein pretty regularly saying,
"Hey, we need a tutor, can you help us?"
And unfortunately thelibrary is not affiliated
with the tutors thatcome into the library.
Those tutors, which we do havea plethora of them around.
Typically they're kindof doing it on their own.
(20:33):
And so we always recommendthat families reach out
to their teachers orspeak to other families
and see what tutors are in the area.
In this case, you could accessa tutor through the library.
- (Drew) It also has flashcardsand study aids on there.
- (Nicole) Oh, cool.
- (Drew) For testing fromfirst grade through SATs.
(20:55):
- (Nicole) Nice.
- (Drew) It tries tocover the whole spread.
- (Nicole) Awesome.
We also have a library app.
- (Drew) Which is so cool.
- (Nicole) Which is so cool.
We all had access to the early version
of the library app,
which I failed to test in any capacity,
(21:16):
but then later realized that there are
so many cool things on there.
You can actually checkoutbooks from your phone.
- (Amanda) Yep, don't even haveto go to the checkout desk,
just do it yourself
and then walk out of thelibrary with the book.
So we've had situations where we have
after hours programming,
and our librarians wereat a loss when families
(21:37):
would wanna actually checkout books,
but none of our computerswere up and available,
so that they could check things out,
but now they could actuallycheckout those items
on their phone and walkout the door with them.
- (Amanda) Very cool.
- (Nicole) Which was great, yeah.
- (Drew) One of my previouslibraries had an app pre-COVID
(21:57):
and it did not have bells or whistles.
It was very good at whatit was designed to do
in the year 2017 or whenever it was.
But just seeing the gap in
the ability of the appfrom that one to ours.
And the way it allows you to checkout it,
(22:19):
it allows you full catalogaccess, full website access.
- (Nicole) All the things very easily.
- (Drew) You can reserve study rooms.
- (Nicole) Oh yeah, yeah, definitely.
So we recommend that you check that out
if you haven't already,
because it's definitely valuable to have.
And do we have anything else?
(22:39):
There's a lot of stuff.
- (Drew) There's a lot of things.
- (Nicole) We have a lot of things.
- (Amanda) There's a lot,
and it's honestly hard to keep track of.
So I think that the bestthing is if you are interested
in a certain item or if youjust have a certain need,
let's say I'm interestedin checking out books
while I'm on vacation.
(22:59):
Right, we can tell you how to do that.
Libby would be a good option.
Hoopla would be a good option.
So if there's a certain need,
chances are a librariancould connect you with
what of our platforms can help you out.
- (Drew) Yeah, we get questionsall the time that's like,
"I would like to do this thing.
How do I do this thing?"
(23:20):
And our response is,
"Well, we have databases,let's go poking around."
- (Nicole) Definitely.
All right, so thank you forlistening to today's episode
and we will see you next time.
- (Nicole) Thank you forjoining us for this episode
of "Distracted Librarians".
- (Drew) Many thanks to BCTVfor their support in recording,
(23:42):
editing and releasing this podcast.
And to the Friends of Library
for sponsoring closedcaptioning on every episode.
- (Killian) If you have any questions
or suggestions, feelfree to reach out to us
at distracted@btpl.org.
- (Amanda) Until then,keep those pages turning
and those screens lighting up.
We'll catch you in the next episode.
(24:02):
- (Emily) The views and opinions expressed
in the "Distracted Librarians" podcast
do not necessarily reflect those
of Bloomfield Township, BloomfieldTownship Public Library,
Bloomfield Community Television,
the Birmingham Area Cable Board,
or its producers or production staff.
- (Nicole) Hey there.
Welcome to the "DistractedLibrarians" podcast.
We are your friendlyneighborhood bookworms
with a penchant forall things pop culture.
- (Drew) Picture thisas our digital campfire
where we dive into our latest obsessions,
analyze our favorite distractions,
and rediscover the joy of reading.
- (Killian) Whether you're amedia enthusiast, a book lover,
(00:21):
or just need a break from the daily grind,
you've come to the right spot.
- (Amanda) So kick back, relax,
and get delightfully distracted with us.
- (Nicole) Hey everybody,today we are going to be
talking about digital anddownloadable tools at the library.
My name is Nicole.
- (Amanda) I'm Amanda.
(00:41):
- (Killian) I'm Killian.
- (Drew) I'm Drew.
- (Nicole) All right, so we have a lot of
really wonderful resources at the library
and we're gonna talk aboutsome of those today. (laughs)
So let's break this down a little bit.
Digital collections and platforms.
What are some of the things that we have
(01:01):
available for patrons?
- (Drew) I mean, I use Libby constantly.
- (Killian) I use Libby constantly.
I also buy all of theyouth collection for Libby,
both for eBooks and the audiobooks.
So it is easily the one thatI am most familiar with,
just because I work with it so much,
both personally and professionally.
(01:21):
- (Nicole) And so, Libbyis run by OverDrive.
And it has a coupledifferent types of resources.
- (Killian) Yeah, we haveeBooks, we have audiobooks.
It used to have some video stuff on there,
but when it's OverDrive thatmerged with Kanopy, correct?
- (Drew) Right, yeah,OverDrive bought Kanopy.
- (Killian) So OverDrive bought Kanopy
(01:43):
and there's not as muchvideo on there now,
but all of our magazines are on OverDrive.
Our digital magazines.
- (Nicole) Oh, okay.
- (Killian) Are on OverDrive now, so.
- (Nicole) Gotcha.
- (Killian) And therefore on Libby.
- (Nicole) Okay, and thenwe have, Hoopla is available
to us as well. And Hoopla isalso eBooks and audiobooks
(02:04):
that are available. And movies.
- (Amanda) Oh, and movies.
And TV shows and music.
And so it's got like awhole bunch of stuff.
- (Nicole) Oh, and comics.
I forgot about that, yeah.
Oh yeah, that's right.
- (Drew) Easily our broadest database.
- (Nicole) Okay, now thedifference between the two
is that one is similar to the library.
I like to look at it
as like if the book ison the library shelf,
(02:24):
therefore it's available.
So there's one copyavailable that is checked out
and then you can be puton hold for that item.
And that's Libby?
- (Killian) Yes and no.
Originally, yes, that was very much,
there's differentcirculation models for each.
And as Hoopla has become acompetitor for OverDrive,
(02:48):
OverDrive has startedmaking, being able to offer
some of its items
as a similar model to Hoopla.
So they have some ways wherethere's unlimited copies
and it tracks the numberof copies that checkout.
But you're not gonna seeholds on Hoopla the way you do
(03:08):
with most things out there, right?
- (Drew) The other big difference
is that we do the purchasing for Libby,
either us or the cooperativethat we're part of.
Whereas Hoopla we buy into the platform,
but we don't really haveinfluence on what's in it.
And we can choose to removethings from the collection.
I don't think we ever did.
(03:29):
But you know, the option is there
to take things off the batch list,
but we can't add things on there.
- (Killian) There's no collectiondevelopment and selection
put into the Hoopla collection.
It's whatever the company that owns it-
- (Nicole) Decides to purchase.
- (Killian) ... has made deals for.
(03:50):
Whereas, like I said,
I do the youth collection for OverDrive.
I go in and I select every item
that is in that collectionfor our libraries' collection.
We do have access to otherlibraries collections
through the cooperative.
And then our cooperative has-
- (Drew) Reciprocity.
- (Killian) ... lending agreement
(04:11):
with other cooperatives
around the state of Michigan as well.
So you can actually log intothose with your card from us
and checkout from there as well.
- (Nicole) Very nice.
I really like Hoopla, 'causeit has weird stuff on it.
- (Killian) Hoopla doeshave some out there.
- (Nicole) It's very weird.
I don't know, I'm kind of interested in
supernatural and magic stuff.
So there is like a huge resource
(04:33):
of those type of books on Hoopla,
which I feel like itwould be very difficult
to get somewhere elsewithout having to pay for it.
So I use Hoopla prettyregularly for those items.
- (Drew) Hoopla's alsomade a lot of, you know,
infrastructure changesrecently that I love.
Their audio player is so muchbetter than it used to be.
(04:54):
- (Nicole) Their graphicnovel or their comic reader is
so nice. I love it, becauseyou can click on a box
that's available on the pageand it makes it super-big
and then it just lets youkind of scroll through
each box individuallyinstead of trying to squint
at each little word on the page.
(05:15):
- (Killian) That's so good to know,
because I don't do digital comics often,
because they can be,
so difficult to read.- (Nicole) It's hard to read.
Yeah, no, but Hoopla,
if you click on the box,it'll blow it up for you
and then you're just flippingthrough the little boxes
one by one.
Yeah, it's really nice.- (Killian) Well, I've learned
something today.
- (Drew) I think, ComicsPlus does that too.
- (Nicole) Okay, that's cool.
(05:37):
- (Drew) And Comics Plus, weliterally just got, you know,
three, four months ago.
- (Nicole) Oh, and I don't knowvery much about that either.
- (Drew) It'll be six monthsby the time this comes out,
but it's brand, brand new access point.
It seems really cool so far.
- (Nicole) Now we've had a discussion
about graphic novels versus comics.
Is it true to comics
(05:58):
or do you think thatthere's graphic novels
thrown in there as well?
- (Drew) No, there aregraphic novels in there too.
- (Nicole) Oh, there are, okay. Cool.
- (Drew) There's graphic novels.
It's got a decent manga collection.
- (Nicole) Oh, nice.
- (Drew) It was one of the reasons
we wanted to go for it in the first place.
- (Killian) Okay, that's good to know,
'cause I get so many kidsin our department coming in
looking for manga
and we don't have a ton
in the youth graphic novel collection.
I know there's more overin Teen that you buy for.
(06:20):
- (Drew) We're working on it.
- (Killian) But, so a lotof times we'll be like,
we have some, it's mixed in over here,
but most of what you're lookingfor is gonna be in Teen.
But being able to know thatthere's a good collection there.
I can send people there now.
- (Nicole) Yeah, very nice.
- (Drew) All the things.
- (Killian) Love learningnew things about our library.
- (Nicole) Okay, well, let'stalk about Kanopy a little bit.
(06:41):
- (Amanda) So Kanopyis a streaming service.
So you can think of it
like a smaller version of Netflix.
You can download it as an app
or you can view it in a web browser.
And it sort of specializes in movies
that might be lesser known.
(07:01):
So they might be your art house films,
your Criterion collection,your foreign films.
Lots of documentaries.
- (Nicole) I was gonna say,when I looked, I was like,
"Oh, there's a lot ofdocumentaries on here."
- (Drew) It started life as aservice for academic libraries
that only had databasesor documentaries on it.
(07:21):
- (Nicole) Oh, okay.- (Drew) And then in only
in recent years, they'vestarted making partnership deals
with film production companies.
So they get the newer A24 film releases,
they're like classic Paramount pictures.
- (Nicole) Oh, okay.
- (Drew) So it's onlyin the last, you know,
five years or so thatthey've expanded into
more of what the publicwould be looking for.
- (Nicole) Cool, all right.
(07:42):
And what is Freegal?
- (Nicole) We don't have Freegal anymore.
- (Killian) No, we don'thave Freegal anymore.
- It was a music-based one.
It was not getting used, sothat got cut a while back.
- (Nicole) Well, just kidding.
Then we're not gonna talkabout Freegal at all.
- (Drew) We did veryrecently add myfilmfriend.
When we signed up for it,
we were one of seven or eightlibraries in the country
(08:03):
to have it.
And it is all foreign films.
- (Nicole) Oh, that's cool.
- (Drew) It's a really, really fun deal.
- (Nicole) Yeah, nice.
- (Drew) It's not a strong collection yet,
but they're literally just starting.
It's cool to be on the ground floor of it.
And it's something that our patrons
from purchasing the DVDs really go for
(08:23):
is our foreign film collection.
So we were excited to offer that as well.
- (Nicole) Awesome, all right.
Well, I know in YouthServices we also have
some really great offeringsthat are available to patrons.
We have ABCmouse, whichis an educational tool
that is kind of a fun learning app
(08:46):
that some of the schoolsalso recommend for kids.
And there's games andthere's a point system
and you can use yourpoints to buy hamsters
and hamster wheels.
And so at least that's whatmy kids were doing with it.
- (Drew) Absolutely, sign me up.
- (Nicole) There's, youknow, it's like educational,
but then there's also kind of like this
(09:08):
very fun game element to it.
So ABCmouse is available.
That's the only one Ibelieve that you can only use
inside of the library though.
- (Killian) I think so, yeah.- (Drew) ABCmouse.
So if that's something thatyou're interested in using,
just come on into the library
and check it out on one of our computers.
Okay, and then we also have BookFlix.
(09:30):
Killian, do you wanna talk about BookFlix?
- (Killian) BookFlix kindof pairs eBooks and video.
So a lot of it is very educational content
where you're getting eBooks about a topic
and then video kind of showing things
and using, you know, video of, you know,
if it's the topic is butterflies,
(09:50):
you're getting video of butterflies,
you might get like a graphic showing
the parts of a butterfly,things like that.
Just different ways to expand learning
from just that reading-based literacy
to also media-based literacy.
- (Nicole) And if I recallcorrectly, that was something
that I was using duringlockdown, during COVID
(10:12):
just for homeschooling my kids
and it was a great resource.- (Drew) Nice.
- (Nicole) Just because, oh my gosh,
today we're talking about space.
How am I gonna do that?
I could go on BookFlix
and it would give me kindof a canned curriculum
for littler kids, yeah.
- (Nicole) Okay, we alsohave some foreign language
(10:33):
study programs that are available,
like Little Pim and Mango Languages.
That's available on our website.
All of these things areavailable on our website.
- (Killian) Yeah, Little Pimis the children's version,
and then Mango Language is kind of Adult.
And I mean, Teen probablywould make more sense
(10:55):
for Mango Languages too.
But there's a lot of reallygreat stuff on there.
And I know a lot of people
use other language learningapps and everything,
but this is one thatyou have free access to
through the library, so-
- (Nicole) Totally.
- (Killian) ... you can double up.
- (Drew) I love Mango.
It has 70 languages on it.
(11:15):
I like promoting it every September,
because it also has pirate speak on there.
- (Nicole) That's fantastic.
- (Drew) And one of the days in September
is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
- (Nicole) So you just have to have it.
- (Drew) Yeah, exactly.
It's a fun thing to promote there,
but it's a really, reallygood integration service
where it does video and audio
(11:36):
and it records you speaking back to it
to really try and get youthe classroom experience
in so far as it can.- (Nicole) Nice.
- (Drew) It's a good service.- (Nicole) Yeah, definitely.
Scholastic Teachables isnew to us at the library.
This is great for peoplethat are educators.
(11:58):
So we've been talking tothe local school district
about Scholastic Teachables,
because there are worksheetsthat are available.
There's tons of resourcesthat are there for teachers.
And this is also another good one
for homeschooling families.
It just makes it easier,
'cause you don't have to makeeverything up from scratch
(12:19):
and they're allage-appropriate for the grade
and all of that too.
And then we also haveTumbleBooks and TumbleMath.
TumbleBooks I believe, isn't it like a,
it reads the books to you?
- (Killian) It's an eBook platform.
Some of them have read along.
That read along formatis kind of just a format
(12:42):
that different things have,
you can find read alongbooks on Libby as well.
But TumbleBooks has a lot of eBooks,
but it also has some gamesthat are on that site as well.
There's a bunch ofeducational content really
for kids on there.
- (Nicole) So for reading and math.
- (Killian) And a bunchof different formats.
And we have TumbleMath as well,
which goes into a lot of math concepts.
(13:04):
- (Nicole) Okay, cool.
All right, what's going onin Adult Services and Teen?
- (Drew) We've got a lot of fun ones.
One of my personalfavorites is Creative Bug.
- (Nicole) I love Creative Bug.
- (Drew) It's a really,really cool service.
We use it for a lot of ourtake and make craft kits
to get ideas.
But it's really just thismassive crafting site
(13:25):
where you can put in the type of crafting
that you want to do,
or the outcome of whateveryou want to have created.
And it will give you, youknow, step-by-step guides
to what tools and materials you need.
- (Nicole) The videos are great.
- (Drew) The videos are great.
- (Nicole) The teachers are really good.
It's super-fun.
(13:46):
And it's a subscription-based service.
So if you were trying toaccess this from home,
not through the library,it would cost money.
I believe it's either monthly or yearly.
And it's just a nice thing that we offer.
- (Drew) A fair few ofour databases are ones
that would be subscriptionservices if you wanted to
go at it from an individual angle.
(14:08):
But the library has institutional access
for everyone who is a card holder
or who are in the buildingwhen they're accessing it.
So that applies to, you know,a lot of our newspapers,
it applies to consumer reports
where it's really justlike an access point.
(14:29):
- (Nicole) Okay.
- (Killian) I love that, oneof the most annoying things
to me is being on FaceBook or whatever,
scrolling through someone'sposted a newspaper article,
you click it and it's like,
this is behind a paywall.
But now, some of those Ican get through the library,
which is great.
- (Amanda) Yeah, one ofthe ones that we offer
is also LinkedIn Learning.
(14:50):
So as you'd imagine with LinkedIn
it is more about careerreadiness or career development.
So that would be a greatone if you want to learn
how to use Excel or if youwant to learn how to use Word.
So that's a really nice one.
And there are also video tutorials.
(15:14):
So you're gonna be getting video tutorials
with sort of nice little modulesto walk the learner through
what they're interested in.
- (Drew) Yeah, they breakthem into 2-5 minute modules.
You can go through and pickout exactly what you want,
'cause a lot of those videosend up four hours long.
- (Nicole) Oh wow, yeah.
(15:35):
- (Drew) To give you the broad overview,
but they also break it downreally, really smoothly.
They have transcripts, theyhave exercise handouts.
It's a whole thing.- (Nicole) Hmm, wow.
- (Drew) One that I reallylike using is Novelist.
It's the one I use the most,
to work as a reader's advisory type deal.
(15:55):
So it is sort of a Goodreads type deal,
not in the logging books,but in book information.
So you can look up any title.
It has a really, reallybroad database of them
and it will give you, youknow, recommended reader,
age ranges, descriptions of the book,
(16:15):
a breakdown of categories,
and it'll also give title,author and series read-a-likes.
- (Killian) And so, if you'veever been in our catalog
and looked something up
and you will see suggestions
for other things you might likeat the bottom of that page.
That's where that comes from.
It's integrated into our catalog,
(16:36):
so that you can find those read-a-likes.
- (Amanda) Cool.
Another one we have is Consumer Reports.
So most people know ConsumerReports from the magazine.
It tells you what is a goodproduct, what is a good brand.
They have ratings on them, prosand cons, comparison sheets
(16:58):
of say, like a vacuum or a dehumidifier,
which is super-useful.
- (Killian) It's super-useful, absolutely.
- (Nicole) I use it quite a bit.
- (Amanda) Yeah, so thisis your online version.
You can access it from home.
It's just really helpful,
because I think if youwere to buy every addition,
(17:19):
it gets quite pricey, but in this case,
the library is paying for it for you.
Yay.
- (Amanda) And that pairssuper-well with the library,
having the ConsumerReports magazines in-house.
- Totally, yeah.
So you can look it up online
or you can come in and view it in-person.
Maybe make a photocopy of thatone, you know, vacuum article
(17:43):
as you're trying tofind the perfect vacuum.
- (Nicole) So, oh my goodness.
- (Drew) Yeah, I thinkone database that is,
you have to be in thelibrary to use, is Ancestry?
- (Amanda) Correct.- (Nicole) Yeah.
- (Killian) Yeah.- (Drew) So Ancestry, we have
in-library access
and it's again to the full service.
So there's nothing specialabout the library access point,
(18:06):
except that it's free for library patrons.
So you would have to come into the library
and either be on our wifi orbe on one of our computers.
But then you get full access to
all of the genealogical thingsthat Ancestry has to offer.
You know, genealogy isthis huge deal right now.
We're doing programsfor it every other month
with the Historical Society.
(18:26):
- (Nicole) Oh, okay, that's cool.
I found some good stuff on there,
so, I think it's interesting, yeah.
- (Killian) Yeah, so I'vemessed around on there before
and it's a lot of fun.
So it's nice to havethat definitely access
without having to pay for it.
- (Amanda) I found out my grandpa
was married an additional time,
(18:48):
so that was sort of fun.
I don't know if my mom knew or not,
(group laughs)
but you'll never know what you find out.
So yes, Ancestry has worked.
- (Drew) Things to bring upat the Thanksgiving table.
(group laughs)
- (Nicole) All right,do we have anything else
for Adult and Teen Services,or is that all good?
(19:10):
- (Drew) And we have tons of databases
between the ones that we purchase into
and the ones that we getfrom being associated
with the Library of Michigan.
That database's page scrollsand scrolls and scrolls.
- (Nicole) Yeah, and so thatgoes for both Adult and Teen
and Youth Services.
These are just a couple of our favorites,
but there's a big long list of things
(19:31):
that are available to patrons.
- (Killian) Yeah, a lot of great resources
for kids writing papers for school.
Things like that
that are solid sources
for those papers as well.
- (Drew) We have access to thefull Gale and EBSCO databases
for, you know, general research as well.
(19:52):
We're talking about the fun ones.
But we do have
the more academically-mindeddatabases as well.
- (Nicole) Definitely.
There is also a tutoring appcalled HelpNow by Brainfuse.
And I believe that that is,
you have access to a one-on-onetutor situation with that,
(20:13):
which is kind of great for,
we have families that comein pretty regularly saying,
"Hey, we need a tutor, can you help us?"
And unfortunately thelibrary is not affiliated
with the tutors thatcome into the library.
Those tutors, which we do havea plethora of them around.
Typically they're kindof doing it on their own.
(20:33):
And so we always recommendthat families reach out
to their teachers orspeak to other families
and see what tutors are in the area.
In this case, you could accessa tutor through the library.
- (Drew) It also has flashcardsand study aids on there.
- (Nicole) Oh, cool.
- (Drew) For testing fromfirst grade through SATs.
(20:55):
- (Nicole) Nice.
- (Drew) It tries tocover the whole spread.
- (Nicole) Awesome.
We also have a library app.
- (Drew) Which is so cool.
- (Nicole) Which is so cool.
We all had access to the early version
of the library app,
which I failed to test in any capacity,
(21:16):
but then later realized that there are
so many cool things on there.
You can actually checkoutbooks from your phone.
- (Amanda) Yep, don't even haveto go to the checkout desk,
just do it yourself
and then walk out of thelibrary with the book.
So we've had situations where we have
after hours programming,
and our librarians wereat a loss when families
(21:37):
would wanna actually checkout books,
but none of our computerswere up and available,
so that they could check things out,
but now they could actuallycheckout those items
on their phone and walkout the door with them.
- (Amanda) Very cool.
- (Nicole) Which was great, yeah.
- (Drew) One of my previouslibraries had an app pre-COVID
(21:57):
and it did not have bells or whistles.
It was very good at whatit was designed to do
in the year 2017 or whenever it was.
But just seeing the gap in
the ability of the appfrom that one to ours.
And the way it allows you to checkout it,
(22:19):
it allows you full catalogaccess, full website access.
- (Nicole) All the things very easily.
- (Drew) You can reserve study rooms.
- (Nicole) Oh yeah, yeah, definitely.
So we recommend that you check that out
if you haven't already,
because it's definitely valuable to have.
And do we have anything else?
(22:39):
There's a lot of stuff.
- (Drew) There's a lot of things.
- (Nicole) We have a lot of things.
- (Amanda) There's a lot,
and it's honestly hard to keep track of.
So I think that the bestthing is if you are interested
in a certain item or if youjust have a certain need,
let's say I'm interestedin checking out books
while I'm on vacation.
(22:59):
Right, we can tell you how to do that.
Libby would be a good option.
Hoopla would be a good option.
So if there's a certain need,
chances are a librariancould connect you with
what of our platforms can help you out.
- (Drew) Yeah, we get questionsall the time that's like,
"I would like to do this thing.
How do I do this thing?"
(23:20):
And our response is,
"Well, we have databases,let's go poking around."
- (Nicole) Definitely.
All right, so thank you forlistening to today's episode
and we will see you next time.
- (Nicole) Thank you forjoining us for this episode
of "Distracted Librarians".
- (Drew) Many thanks to BCTVfor their support in recording,
(23:42):
editing and releasing this podcast.
And to the Friends of Library
for sponsoring closedcaptioning on every episode.
- (Killian) If you have any questions
or suggestions, feelfree to reach out to us
at distracted@btpl.org.
- (Amanda) Until then,keep those pages turning
and those screens lighting up.
We'll catch you in the next episode.
(24:02):
- (Emily) The views and opinions expressed
in the "Distracted Librarians" podcast
do not necessarily reflect those
of Bloomfield Township, BloomfieldTownship Public Library,
Bloomfield Community Television,
the Birmingham Area Cable Board,
or its producers or production staff.
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