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Did you know that with your Juniata County library card you can get more than 20,000 free digital books? eBooks are books that you can read on a tablet or smart device. eAudio titles are like books on CD but you can listen to them through your tablet or smart device.
I often say that nothing is more expensive than free. Here is a glimpse into how we get those 20,000 free digital books available to you.
When we pay for a print book, it's a one-time fee for it and we own it forever. When we pay for a digital book, we get limited access to it and do not keep it forever. A print book can cost between $5 and $50 but a digital book can cost up to $120. A big difference!
Digital books are usually available for a set number of uses or for unlimited uses over a set period of time. For example: we buy an eAudio book for $120 and we either 1) have access to it for two years, during which it can be borrowed an unlimited amount of times and then we have to buy it again or 2) we have access to it for an unlimited amount of time but it can only be borrowed 26 times and then we have to buy it again. This means that a digital book could cost us hundreds of dollars over time just to continue to have access to it and we don't even own it!
Digital books, especially eAudio formats, are really popular today. They are great to have when you are on the go, such as in the car, cleaning the house, or on a walk.
Our digital content is available 24/7. All you need is a library card! If you have one, visit our website and click on the eBooks link on the top of the page. If you do not have a library card, visit our website and click Get a Library Card on the top of the page and we will mail you one. If you are unsure how to get a book on your device or are running into issues, you can message us and we will help!
Book of the week
If you are going to read one book, give this one a try:
We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland by Fintan O'Toole
(New adult nonfiction: History, Europe, Political)
"The transformation of Ireland over the last sixty years has sometimes felt as if a new world had landed from outer space on top of an old one," writes the author, a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and Irish Times.
Since his birth in 1958, the fundamental character of Ireland as a poor, rural backwater left out of the postwar European economic miracle has changed. Ireland became a hotbed of economic activity in which, as elsewhere, those who were not prepared for the technological world were left behind, though lately the island has slipped back into post-boom quietude.
Things were good while they lasted, writes O'Toole: "The boom … was a giant machine for sucking in borrowed money that the Irish used mostly for buying bits of the country from each other at ever more inflated prices and, when they ran out of bits of Ireland, doing the same with bits of other, sunnier islands."
Nonfinancial changes also came swiftly, as a kind of uneasy peace has taken the place of civil war in the northern counties under British rule, and Ireland has acquired a cultural sophistication that goes beyond the "hysteria and self-caricature" of Riverdance.
Interestingly, O'Toole writes, for a nation that was once conservative and Catholic, religion is less central than before, and liberal reforms have been made in such realms as abortion rights and same-sex marriage.
"When I was born, there was no future and now there is no future again," he writes near the end of his astute analysis.
He argues that this is positive, since it allows for a nondogmatic, adaptable approach to whatever comes as opposed to "the pretense of knowing everything and the denial of what you really do know," a knowing return to his title.
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Vince Giordano has been the librarian and director of the Juniata County Library since 2015.