Your Digital Library

Some years after Ben Franklin founded the Library Company of Philadelphia 1731, perhaps the first successful library in the United States, although the first public library may have been a hundred years earlier, he wrote "Libraries have improv'd the General Conversation of Americans, made the common Tradesmen & Farmers as intelligent at the Gentlemen from most other countries, and perhaps have contributed to some degree to the Stand so generally made throughout the Colonies in Defence of their Privileges."

The free library is thought to have been an American invention. But of course those early libraries were entirely about printed books--and magazines and newspapers.  The library of today has long been a source of music, the spoken word, film, and often games or works of visual art.  But today many persons do all of their reading at their computer, smartphone, or "pad" or e-reader. Similarly they listen to music or radio and watch film and art--and certainly play games--from a digital source.  In this regard, the United States may no longer be the leader. Several European countries have digitized hundreds of thousand books, magazines, newspapers, radio and television broadcasts, and photographs to form National Libraries online.  We may be behind, but we are not out of the running, however.  Millions of books have been digitized by Google, Kindle, and other purveyors of ebooks.  Books that are out of copyright can usually be obtained for free. The most ambitious of these is Google Books.

While current ebooks can be purchased from several sources, another important way to obtain digital versions of the kinds of material usually handled in other media forms by library is from your own Pleasant Valley Free Library with help from the Mid-Hudson Library System.  Just go to your Pleasant Valley Library Website  and look for the box on the lower left that says "Download Audio Books and eBooks."  That link will take you to a maddenly slow presentation by Overdrive that tells you how to borrow current books, audio books, and even motion pictures using the Overdrive system.  Give it a try.