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Politics & Government

Los Gatos Library Launches New Freading eBook Lending Service

Town library one of few in country offering free ebook program.

The new Freading ebook service launched last month at the American Library Association Conference in New Orleans and it's now live at your Los Gatos Public Library.

The service features more than 20,000 titles from more than a dozen publishers.

Here's how Freading works:

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Upon logging in with your library credentials, you will see a splash page come up, with an easy 1-2-3 guide to enjoying ebooks.

In the upper right corner of the site, you will see information regarding your account. Specifically, you will see an allotment of "tokens," which is a virtual currency that you can redeem for ebook downloads. It will say 2/2, or some other configuration, which means you have two tokens for this week, and you have two tokens remaining.

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Different books cost different token amounts. The token amount required for a book is labeled clearly on the book display. Unused tokens roll over to the following week. Every four weeks, unused tokens expire.

The library may have an overall token redemption limit. If it does, you might not be able to download books, but you will be able to queue up for the following week to do so.

The Los Gatos Library is among a handful in the country trying the service including the Orange County Public Library System in Florida, the Free Library of Philadelphia, Maricopa County Library District in Arizona and the Westport Public Library in Connecticut. 

Not all of the participating publishers have been announced, but the ones that have include Sterling Publishing, Sourcebooks, Andrews McMeel, and Regnery Publishing.

Library Ideas, a Fairfax, VI media company delivering digital services to libraries, launched the program and said more than 50 libraries have signed up for it and about 40 publishers have made titles available.

Library Ideas cofounder Brian Downing said Freading will complement ebook supplier noting that Freading’s lack of a platform fee allows libraries to access titles with no upfront costs and helps them control their spending over the course of a budget year.

Participating libraries and patrons will have simultaneous access to titles without buying multiple copies, Downing said.

 
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