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Showing posts with label eBooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eBooks. Show all posts

Saturday, March 13, 2021

Life in Colour.

Once again joining in with Jude over at her Travel Words blog for the monthly feature, Life in Colour. This month’s colour is green. This week, Jude has written a post here  about trams/streetcars, with their stunning  green paintwork of course. Her photos of these lovely old beauties are just wonderful! 
My post this week features an eclectic/hotchpotch of ‘greens’. 💚🟢🟩

Once I had a very bright fresh looking tablecloth for our rather large outdoor table...


The grandchildren liked to count all the different greens in those stripes.
I still have that cloth, but time has taken a toll on that brightness...


Here we are one afternoon last month. Miss 5 has joined us after school for some afternoon tea. The cloth may be faded but look at that very new school uniform...yep! Greens! 

Next, is half way around the world from here. The lovely green painted metal ( and shopping baskets) at Borough Markets in London. 

Lovely memories of a holiday in 2019. We took cheeses, breads, deli meats and fruit from the market back to our holiday apartment in Chelsea. 

And here is another  green in my life...
With Covid-19 came library closures and suddenly I became a lot more enthusiastic about ebooks. I’d bought such books over the years but now I started to borrow them from the library. And BorrowBox is the app that most of the titles I was interested in were available. ( a few still used Overdrive as the reader) 


For me I still love the so called traditional Christmas colours which certainly include green. Last year I made some knitted wreaths as little gifts for friends...some were green...well maybe most were green! Lol




A few years back I was shopping at a Christmas Market at the Karuna Hospice here in Brisbane and spied this elf. The amount of work involved in its making was impressive and the price quite rightly reflected this. But I’d fallen in love and it was a good cause, so the green elf came home with me. 

And I once pinned this next photo on my Pinterest Christmas board...


Now this next photo may look like a big pine undecorated Christmas tree, but looks are deceiving. It’s actually a phone tower in Hawaii. I took the photo through the window of the bus that had taken us on a tour of the island of Kauai. 


What a great way to disguise a phone tower! 
And there will be some more ‘greens’ from me next week. 




Tuesday, March 26, 2013

What's on at the local library...

Last Tuesday I went to a workshop at the local library. It was an 'Introduction to downloadable books from the library'. The workshop promised, 'Take a guided tour on how to borrow and download free digital books from the library catalogue. Discover where to find help when downloading these digital books at home'.
So it was, that clutching my iPad, I turned up at 10.30 to meet Bronwyn, the librarian running the workshop. There was only one other student.

Here's Bronwyn, just starting the workshop...


I've copied the list of items/services that are available through Brisbane City Council when you click on 'eBooks and downloads'...quite a lot eh!


  eBooks & Downloads
1. Bolinda Digital eAudiobooks
2. OverDrive Download
3. OneClickdigital eAudiobooks
4. Freegal Music Downloads
5. EBSCOhost Clipper DL eBooks
6. Good Reading Magazine Online
7. in2Era (Interactive Children's books)
1. International Children's Digital Library
2. RealTime Health
3. Safari Books Online
4. AudioBookCloud (formerly Tumble Talking Books)
5. TumbleBooks - eBooks for eKids
6. beamafilm


Here is the same list as you would see it on the computer screen when you access the library on the internet.


Now this workshop concentrated on #2,  OverDrive Download. We learned how to install the  OverDrive Media Console on a device (IOS,PC, eReader etc).  OverDrive is American, but a consortium of Australian libraries has been formed so that members can access the thousands of e Books that are available.  We were told that 3 of the world's 6 major publishers have joined OverDrive so there is a wide variety of literary genres available for loan.


A Kobe eReader, Sony eReader and an iPad. But if you don't have an eReader device you can install an app to a PC or Mac which will allow you to upload digital books :-) and read them on the computer

You use your library ID to access this and it's free! You can borrow these eBooks for 7, 14 or 21 day loans...you select the time period you want. When the time is up...the book disappears from your device...and as Bronwyn the librarian said, the days of overdue books are over! (my '1950s model' brain , found this part difficult to comprehend, lol )

Now I would suspect that if Brisbane City Council libraries offer this eBooks' loan service, other public libraries would too. Here in Brisbane, local libraries run these workshops on a regular basis, so you just need to enquire. It's worth it.

 Bronwyn also  drew our attention to #4 on the list...Freegal Music downloads. Library patrons are able to download 3 music tracks per week, absolutely free. The amount of music available through Freegal to choose from is quite large. I would not have known about that if I hadn't attended the workshop. I think our local library staff should become everyone's best friends!

I have installed the appropriate software on my iPad but have not as yet, borrowed an eBook because I have 3 'real' library books that I'm still reading. But I've surfed through the titles and have my eye on a couple of craft books on quilting and some mystery genre novels as well.