Library Lines: What is a library consortium?
March is here and the annual community quilt show at the Cheboygan Area Public Library has begun. Thank you to the Rivertown Patchworkers Quilt Guild who helped hang all the amazing quilts. Quilts will be on display for the entire month of March and viewable during regular library hours, which are Monday-Wednesday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Thursday 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Sunday 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Exciting partnerships are happening between Cheboygan Area Public Library as part of the Up North Michigan Consortium and six other library consortiums! These consortiums are offering new partnerships in our Up North Digital Collection (provided through Overdrive) and Libby (Overdrive’s app).
First, you may be wondering what a library consortium is and why we are part of one. Simply put, a library consortium is a group of libraries that share resources. When libraries share resources and the financial obligations that go with them (in other words, everyone shares the cost), it allows libraries to provide services to patrons that individually the libraries wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. For example, as a single library, we would not be able to afford to subscribe to Overdrive as our source for e-books and audiobooks, but as a group, we can.
Second, have you checked out our Up North Digital Collection? This is a digital service our library consortium subscribes to through Overdrive to offer eBooks, audiobooks, and digital magazines to our patrons. You can access the Up North Digital Collection by visiting the Cheboygan Area Public Library website cheboyganlibrary.org and clicking on “Digital Catalog” on the top menu.
And voila, you are looking at the Up North Digital Collection’s offerings! Now explore! You can search by subject, find kids or teen titles, or view magazines. If you click on the drop-down menu “Collections” you will see other search options. When you find an item you want to borrow, just click on it and follow the instructions to borrow it! When prompted, you select Cheboygan Area Public Library as your library and use your library card to sign in.
Third, do you know about Libby? It is awesome! Libby is an app offered by Overdrive. If you have not yet discovered Libby, here is the fun news — you can access audiobooks, eBooks, and digital magazines from your handheld devices (tablets, e-readers, phones) for free with your library card! To access Libby, visit your app store and search for “Libby, by Overdrive.” After the Libby app is downloaded, you can “add your library” (which is the Up North Digital Consortium) with your library card. But here is where the new and exciting partnerships come in — you can also add our new partners as new libraries and access their collections, too.
When you add our new partners, you gain access to over 200,000 more eBooks, audiobooks and digital magazines! YEAH, for new partnerships.
And more good news — if you want help learning how to use the Up North Digital Collection or Libby, you can sign up for free Tech Help on Fridays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and receive one-on-one assistance! To sign up for Tech Help, just call the Library at 231-627-2381 or stop by and ask the staff at the front desk to sign you up.
Something else to look for in the Library includes recently acquired digital files of old Cheboygan High School yearbooks and some of the high school’s Kodak publications! The yearbooks include '49, ‘54, ’59, ’64, ’65, ’66, ’72, ’74, ’75, and ’77 and the Kodak ranges from 1923 to 1937. These files are saved in a folder on the desktop of the main ScanPro computer in the Genealogy/Local History room in the main library. Pages can be printed from these files (15 cents/page, black & white). There are also some physical yearbooks in the Genealogy/Local History room covering the years of ’55, ’57, ’58, ‘60, ’61, ’62, ’64, ’82, ’84, ’85, and ’86.
— Emily Clare is program director of the Cheboygan Area Public Library.
This article originally appeared on Cheboygan Daily Tribune: Library Lines: What is a library consortium?
