Hoopla & Libby Library Card Tips with Laura from What to Read Next Podcast

Welcome to the Fang Over podcast where we romance all things that go bump in the night and beyond. I'm Francesca from Under the Covers book blog and today we are celebrating Library Week and I have a special guest today and it's Laura from the What to Read Next podcast. Laura, thank you for joining us.

Coming on and sharing all your expertise about library cards and how to read more books and enjoy the perks. Thank you so much for having me. I want to preface, I'm not a librarian, but I'm a super library user. So I have, I can give you from the reader perspective all that you need to know about libraries and how to actually get access to free to low cost books in a really easy way.

Laura is the resource you guys need to follow for how to read more library, how to like get the most also out of your Kindle unlimited. So if those two things are of interest to you, make sure you head to her site for sure. Listen to her podcast, visit her blog, sign up and all the things. But Laura, today we are going to kind of like Talk us through as if we are complete beginners, because that is basically me as well, and how can we get started?

Obviously, people have a concept that when you're looking at a library card is your local library, you know, so that's kind of what people are used to. But there's obviously a lot more to that, and people can actually get cards from other places, so kind of walk us through how that process works. Yes, when I started using the library, I thought it was just going to a physical library and getting physical books and a lot of times you can do that.

And if you're a physical book reader, libraries are a great resource. What you do is you place a book on hold. And then it's like kind of like what Netflix used to look like back in the day when they used to mail the CDs, same idea. Same process where they'll, they'll get an email saying, Hey, come to the library.

Your books are ready to go. And if your book is not available in your library branch, they'll be available with some other library branch in the system and they'll just mail it in. That's a physical library. That's probably much, you may have an idea about it, but one of the things that thanks to the pandemic, but also for the past, like 10 years, we also have.

ebook resources and other resources the library offers like they offer classes, they offer movies, offer music, they offer access to New York Times, um, New York Times and other newspapers, um, New York Times cooking, new, all these different things. And so that's the ebook access, the, the e digital access to it that you may not think about it, but those are free things that you have access to.

So the first thing I would suggest is joining your local library and your library might not have good resources and that's totally fine, but just join it added to your circulation. It helps for like tax reasons because libraries are funded by the got by the tax property taxes as the government specifically.

And so the more circulation they have, the more chances are they can actually say to the government. So like, Hey, we need more budget to. Buy more resources. Um, so that's how things get paid. But if your library is not as hollow, it's not as like, flush with like, books is the best way to describe it, especially with ebooks, audiobooks, and all those different things.

There's there's an option that other libraries offer is non resident cards, where you pay a fee of like from 27 to sometimes free to 50 100 120 a year. It's a year. It's not like a month. It's a year and you have access to their digital library. And the digital library can include access to Libby, which is, um, a system, it's kind of like, basically, it's called OverDrive, it's originally OverDrive, but it's called Libby now, where you have access to their ebooks and audiobooks, and the ebooks you can send it over to your Kindle, so it's a fairly simple process where you Borrow the book, then your Kindle will send it over and you can read on Kindle.

You'll have a burn time between 7, 14 and 21 days. And once it's up, the book gets returned to the library. There's no fines. There's no fees. So it automatically gets returned. So that's a pretty good way to have those books. And same goes with audio books, you can listen to audio book to have an audio book player that works really well, it does go over the different speeds, I think up to four speed four times speed.

So if you're like a like a fast listener, they have that for you. And you can borrow that as a Libby is great. But Libby is great. It's based on different branches and so some branches have a lot of materials while others don't. And so that's where we recommend to look at non resident cards where you pay a fee.

Um, and some of the non resident cards that I would recommend is to look at Um, depending on what you're looking for. If you want like a lot of romance, um, I would say Cincinnati, NOLA, Miami are good systems. Miami Dade, which is in Florida, that's a good system for like new releases. NOLA, which is New Orleans Public Library, um, actually has great audiobooks.

Listeners, they invest a lot of money on their audiobook selection. So if you're an audiobook listener, that's a really good bang for your money. Cincinnati is a little bit more pricey and it's a case by case basis, but they have a great romance selection. And so what you do, essentially, you go reach out to the company, you reach out to the, to the library.

I do have a post where it tells you like which ones are the best for romance reader so you can actually have the direct link and you reach out to them. You say, Hey, I'm interested in a non resident card. Um, here's my information and you will have, they'll send you over. The card information, they'll work with you through, sometimes you might have to do like a Zoom meeting with the librarian and say like, you can show like your real person and kind of deal.

And what they'll do is after that they'll send you, they'll have a fine, which is your fee, right? And every year when it, it's about to get renewed, they'll reach out to you and say like, Hey, do you want a renewal card? And you can say, yes. and renew the card. And if you don't, that's totally fine. Um, but that's a really good way to get a better bang for your money.

So, because I know a lot of times the frustrating thing about libraries is that there's wait times, like, especially with Libby, you may have to wait two, 12 weeks, months, years to get access to it. And so it's a better way to have multiple library cards because Libby automatically checks on all the library cards and tell you when is the amount of wait time that you have.

Or you can instantly borrow at the moment. Nice. So one question would be how many of those cards can you add to Libby? Like, is there a limit? The limit doesn't exist. The limit doesn't exist. So I actually, I have a couple, a couple of suggestions, um, that I, that have been shared in other places and stuff like that.

And I actually have find a couple of friends. If you have internet friends in other cities, like now that we, that's pretty normal that we have internet friends, Instagram friends, or people like. Actually ask them to, you can borrow, like set up a spreadsheet and basically just put the different Libby cards and the pin numbers and have each other borrow each other's library cards to add it to your Libby.

So that way you have to, and do it with people that you're close to, that you're not, they're not going to abuse the system. But like, have like, you know, have a place where you actually share it. So you share that we should spread the well. So I have friends who are in New York, and so I have access to some of the New York libraries, I share my Florida libraries, I do pay for non resident cards.

So we have like, we actually split the cost. It's another way, you can have a couple friends to split the cost of like four library cards. And that's it comes down to like, I think it's like $75 for all the like, I think all the libraries that we have, it costs 75 a year, but we have access to about 10 libraries, you know, between all of us.

And so that's a really good way to add those library cards for you. Um, there are different websites where they'll tell you and you can look for, um, Reddit or even TikTok. People start talking about like, you know, which library cards offering non resident cards and stuff like that. So you can look up for like, hey, new systems are offering them.

Or the system is no longer offering them and whatnot. But it's the limit does not exist. I have actually have 15 library cards and I'm looking to acquire probably a couple more to test out. Cause I test them out and I'm like, okay, which ones are worth the money for others to share? Yeah. So you, you have a bunch of like resources and you're going to, I know you're working on a bigger, more in depth list, so guys are paying attention when she releases that.

Cause there's going to be a lot of information on there. Yeah. So I'm looking, I'm looking to find to work on a Libby resource needed to know that there'll be resources and all the other library uses that you may not think about it. Um, libraries actually have access to LinkedIn courses, which used to be Linda.

They have access to Kanopy, which is like a movie, movie streaming services. They have free music. Um, they have access to, and even your local library, if you're a gardener, they might have a seed, like they might have like a seed collection. They have like Cricut machines. They have like 3d printing. Like you want to check on like, what's actually your local library can offer.

They're not just books because they have all these other resources that they can actually offer for you. Yeah, I think sometimes we don't think about all the things that can be found at the library. We just think library and we think automatically books, which obviously that's what we're here for. But yeah, they do have so much more to offer as well.

Yeah, so the other option is if you're an audiobook listener, you probably have heard of Hoopla. And Hoopla is like pretty easy system that you just instantly borrow the books and you just like you can borrow them for 21 days and then just return and um the problem with hoopla in some library systems that they may not have it because it's expensive it's an expensive system or they might have a pretty low selection or they might have a borrow limit of four or Or all the hoopla borrows are used at midnight.

So you have to like use them early and stuff like that. So there are actually certain libraries cards non resident library cards that you can borrow that you can pay for We'll have access to hoopla. Uh, miami has access to hoopla Orange County has access to Hoopla, which these are Florida libraries.

NOLA has access to Hoopla, Cincinnati has access to Hoopla, um, so most of the library cards say Stark, which is in Ohio, and I have a list and I'll send them to show notes. They do have Hoopla. So if you don't have Hoopla in your current library, but you're an audiobook listener, you will like to have access to it.

Any of those non resident library classes will have it and they have pretty much pretty, pretty generous borrowing limits of like 10 to 15 to 20 books a month, which is a pretty big number. Um, cause I've heard some libraries don't have it, or they might have four borrow limit for, for a month and that's not enough for, an avid audiobook listener who's like, I need to listen to as many books as possible.

Yeah, that's kind of one of the advantages of audiobooks. I feel like you can just binge through a whole audiobook depending on, you know, what your work is or whatever, but you could be doing work and listening to your audiobook. So yeah, definitely. We need more audiobooks. Yeah, so audiobooks, I mean, I don't pay for audiobooks.

Actually, I pay for Kindle limited whispersync when it's like 7, but I don't have like an audible, I get audible memberships every so often for when there's a deal for like 99 cents, but I typically don't have an audiobook membership because I get to borrow pretty much every book on the library. Um, so either between NOLA and my library cards I actually have access to, like, traditional published, or the indies I get access to them on Hoopla.

And there's like, and not just indie, like, romance, but there's also, like, indie, Thrillers are popular non KU. A lot of them have like audiobooks in their own hoopla. Cozy mystery, like historical mystery, historical fiction, like there's a whole wide range. Non fiction, celebrity memoirs, you might find them.

Um, and popular books, they're really popular at a time. Wait a month or two because the library will acquire a ton of those books and then they'll be available. Like a lot of the Emily Henry books are available already for a listen. Not funny story, but like the ones from last year. Same goes for the Britney Spears, same goes for the Janet McCurdy, like all these books are already available for you to borrow.

Um, so don't be intimidated by the wait times, wait a little bit and you'll be surprised that they'll acquire more books. Right. So sometimes like for popular new releases, maybe you're not going to get them unless you're lucky. You're not going to get them right as soon as they come out, but you know, shortly thereafter.

Actually, a trick to get out as soon as they come up is you need to request it from your library. So you can actually request your library Purchase a book, which means, and I have a post about this, but basically you go to the library and if you're like an ebook, you can go to overdrive and say like, Hey, library, I want to listen to this book and stuff like that.

Sometimes they'll bump you up or sometimes they'll notify you. You can click on Libby to notify and you can just be a point. The same goes for if you want to get a physical copy of the book. This is what I used to do when I live in New York. I used to just send an email. I used to just request a book.

Like before the before the book came out, like I would know what's books coming out. And I usually was the first one on the line. So it was like a publication day, I'll be getting the physical book. So you can always request a book to the library, the library may or may not buy it. But chances are, if it's traditionally published, they will buy it.

And then you'll have access to it earlier than you know. Right, right. And now when it comes to requesting and kind of like talking a little bit about traditionally published and indie. So do you find that there is a bigger selection of traditionally published or is there a nice balance of traditional and indie books available?

The problem with indie books right now is that a lot of them are kindle unlimited. If they're kindle unlimited, they're exclusive to Amazon. So you're not going to see them on the library. You might see versions of it in translation versions because they're not part of the KDP program. So that's one right now, like this is a trend right now.

A few years ago, it was much more easier to find indies that were wide. That were not KU, but now a lot of authors in the indie space have been enrolling the program in KU because it's making a lot of money. Um, and so that's it, but you might be able to find audio books are not audible, exclusive. Um, so you want to check like the audio book, like you, if they're not audible exclusive, so you might be able to find those audio books there.

But that's the other, it's a, it's a royalty structure of what they make. With traditionally published, you're likely to find them in the library because they have, the publishers have a deal with libraries, they sell licenses, and they can actually have those books. Right. Requesting then, I guess, um, if you want to request an indie book from your library, you have to check if it's on KU.

And if it's likely that's not going to get, um, However, if you see that they have an audiobook, you can request the audiobook. You can request the audiobook. And look at the library, what their purchasing habits are. So I would say like for Indie, Romance, Cincinnati is likely to buy it. Maybe NOLA is likely to buy it.

Like it's, look at what there are. So one thing I do is, I, with an audiobook, I go into my Libby app and I go into new romance releases and audiobooks and then just look at what they're actually buying. I scroll, scroll, scroll, they let you scroll for 42 pages and you just like, you get an idea of what it looks like.

It's like, kind of like, like for me, it's like book shopping without having to pay money for. So, uh, but you get an idea of what they're buying and what they're doing. Do what they're not buying. But Cincinnati is a good, is a good system. It costs 90. It's a little more pricier. But if you're looking for a romance reader, Cincinnati is by far the best system for it.

That's paid. Um, if you're in New York, maybe Brooklyn, but Brooklyn has a lot of wait. Um, and Brooklyn no longer offers non resident unless you live in New York City or New York in New York State. Um, so Cincinnati and then Nola, if you're looking for audiobooks. Nice. Okay. So now that you mentioned about, um, the Brooklyn Library now only offering the non residents for New York State residents.

Yeah. With the ones that you mentioned before, you can live anywhere or like You can live anywhere. You should be able to I think you have to live in the U. S. There might be some that lets you live internationally. Internationally. Um, but you might have to live in the us They don't ask you for a driver's license.

They don't ask you. So, but I mean, you're still putting like your real address or Right. Do what you Well , we're not, we're not, we're do what? You, well, we'll leave that up to you guys. Okay? Yes. We're, we're not, we're not telling you just, we're not telling you what to do. And you, do you also need a phone number when you're signing up for these things?

You do need to have a phone number. Um, you do have to, they might ask you for a phone number. I think they do. They ask for the phone number. So yeah. And then as far as like the apps that are actually going on your phone is Libby and Hoopla. Libby and Hoopla are the main ones that you want to add on your phone.

And then to the, those two, with both of those, you're listening to audiobooks directly on those apps, but with Libby. You can send the ebook to your Kindle, correct? Okay. I think I got like the gist of this down. And then, and then if you send a book to your Kindle and it's day, day 14 or day 21, and you're like, Oh my gosh, I, I'm like 10%.

I need to finish this. And what do I do? Um, the trick is just to turn off the wifi and put the Kindle in airplane mode. The Kindle will stay the same. It will not sync it. The book will still be there. You're not gonna pay the fine, and then you're just gonna, it's gonna return once you, once you turn it back on to turn it back on.

Yes. So that's like a trick, like you're like, just, you know, I gotta finish this. Are you able, like say that maybe you didn't start it yet, and it's like the last day. Are you able to renew it? Like how you used to You may renew it, yes. You may be able to renew it. It'll give you the option unless people are waiting for it.

Okay. Okay, so it'll bump you if you want to renew it, it'll just bump you to the end of the line. Yeah. The other thing is, if you request a bunch of stuff on hold, and they'll come at once, you can actually tell Libby to deliver it later. You can say like deliver in seven days, 10 days, or let's wait, wait till I'm ready for it.

And Libby will wait for you till you're ready for it. So you don't have all this like the wealth of like 20 books at once. You're like, how am I gonna do this? Yeah, because they're like request happy and then all of a sudden they're all available. Yes, yes, it's like request happy, like I went shopping and then I'm like, oh my gosh, what am I doing now?

Seven days. Yeah. Stressful. So do you get reminders about your deadlines or is that something you kind of have to track yourself? The, um, Libby can actually give you reminders of the deadline, like you may get notifications and stuff. I turned them off, but they are annoying, but you can go, whenever you enter the , Libby will tell you when it's due and what stuff to do.

Okay. All right. I think that for the most part, you guys probably got a good overview of how you're going to get started. You have some libraries to look at, you know, depending also on what you what you like to listen to. If you're an audio book reader, you know where to go, kind of. And I know that Laura has a So I'm going to leave a couple of links to the posts that she talked about.

I know she has a really good post about hoopla and for sure. I want, I am dying for your whole review on different library cards. So we'll be on the lookout for that, Laura, for sure. I know I have to update my review because I actually added a couple systems and I was telling Francesca I just realized Cincinnati has a hoopla and I haven't reviewed it.

Um, the problem with hoopla is that you have to have separate accounts per person so you have to have a separate email. Um, hoopla, hoopla systems don't talk to each other like Libby talks to each other. So that's actually on the docket to see if Cincinnati is like the golden, golden standard of romance reader.

Um, so to be continued. So with Hoopla, you're not doing the same with Libby where you can add unlimited cards. Is that what it is? You cannot, you have to, it's one card per email. Okay. Okay. Interesting. So you just have to pick the best one, obviously. You just, Actually, no, you just have a bunch of emails and just set up like your card, like set up like separate systems.

Yeah, like that's why you have a spreadsheet for that. You save your passwords and you have like different cards and different places. And that's, you know, Yeah, it's a little more, um, effort intensive, let's say. Yes, it's more effort intensive. Like, I wish I can tell you, I was like, they can talk to each other, but they don't.

So it's, it's fine. But I guess if you find one that pretty much usually has what you're looking for, you're not switching around that much. I'm not switching. Personally, I don't switch around. I stick to NOLA because it's by far my favorite one out of all the hooplas. But I do, I do check on, like, review, and the way I review them is I scroll through what is available on hoopla, what's, what, like, what has been added, and it gets you an idea what kind of books they're for.

So then I have to, I can say it to someone. And I do share some of these Hoopla accounts. I don't, I share this Hoopla account with my library pod. As I mentioned earlier in the pod, I have a group of friends, we share, we pay the fee and we share each other's account. And so each person has a Hoopla account that they can actually access to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I guess for that it would matter because you wouldn't be able to use the same email on multiple apps at the same time. You should have a primary for sure. Yeah. So you find the primary you figure out you have it, you know, and if you run out of borrows and you can go to your second Hoopla account and then you use all the borrows and the same goes, you know, So when it comes to like the other stuff that you're saying that libraries also offer let's just touch on that for like a little bit.

And what are those like digital things? Say, for example, you're paying for the NOLA, um, library card for the non resident, so you have access to the e books, you have access to the audiobooks. Is there something else that you're getting as a non resident? They do have like, I don't know, but they have, if you're a craft person, there's like a craft course, kind of like a great course for that.

Um, some libraries offer Coursera actually as part of their fee, which is actually like, it's a paid expense. Um, um, some libraries offer like, so legal, like they have a legal depot. I've seen that in some libraries, um, they have, um, things in Spanish, things in English. Things in other languages, they do acquire materials in other languages.

If you want to like learn a language, they do have materials for that. Um, so there's each library system has different, different things. Um, you can find them when you go to Libby, there's going to be kind of like a whole, um, there's kind of like a banner and there's like a, like a, like a running list of programs they have, and you can borrow them for 7, 14, 21 days and have access to them.

And it's unlimited. Um, Also, if you are a New York Times, New York Times reader and you want to like, like when you don't want to pay the four dollars to get the membership, you can log in through your library card and then they'll be able to access. They also have, I think, I know Tampa has New York Times cooking on the app specifically.

So if you like the recipes, you're like, oh my gosh, I want to know this. Run a recipe, um, your library might have access to it. The same goes, I think it may have also access to the games too, so things you can save money from and you're like, Hey, I'm a Wordle or I'm a Connections fan. You might, your library may actually offer you the service for free.

You don't have to pay for it. Right. Okay. Nice. And most of that stuff is going to be like, you can see it at least through the Libby app. You don't have to go Libby app and New York Times. I don't know. New York Times is actually on the website. Oh, magazines. I forgot. I actually read my magazines on Libby.

So most of the magazines are digital and you can just like, once you borrow them, they'll keep your subscription. So every week you get the new Us Weekly and the People Magazine. Like I'm telling you all your gossip magazines. I, I have that for me. Kindle Unlimited also offers gossip magazines, like magazines too.

Uh, but that's like a, you don't have to pay for magazines. You can get the digital version of it. I didn't realize that Kindle Unlimited also offer that. Yeah, they do. We need to do a Kindle Unlimited deep dive. We'll do a Kindle Unlimited deep dive next. Hopefully we'll go back to get all her knowledge.

But yeah, so you can listen, you can look for magazines and stuff like that. I know magazine is a dying art form, but like as someone who is like an avid magazine reader, It's kind of like fine, like if you like recipes and stuff, um, you can borrow cookbooks on ebook version of it. That's one thing I do, like if you want to scroll through the recipes before buying a book, book, cookbook, um, you can do that, but you can also borrow cookbooks on the library.

Um, and some libraries, if you don't have a car, some libraries mail you the book. I actually, the Florida libraries, they do mail you the book, so you don't even need to go to the library. So. Check your system, check what they're offering, you know, try like I would say try it before you buy it kind of deal.

Um, so yeah, I think that actually that's a really good advice because cookbooks can get expensive and sometimes you're getting a cookbook just because like maybe you know that there's going to be like one or two good recipes or whatever. And then you'd like you never open it again, like you made that one, never open it again.

So I think that using the library for that is excellent. Yeah, yeah. So your tablet for that because like then it would be like smaller. Yeah, you can use this tablet. I don't have a tablet. So I use my phone and stuff like that. Sometimes I screenshot it and I save, save the recipe that I'm going to use, I screenshot it and stuff like that.

So that I know which one I like. But otherwise, other times I will buy the book afterwards. And I'll have that, you know, if the book is actually worth it, I'll buy it, or I'll borrow it and stuff. Are you able to send something like a cookbook or a magazine to your Kindle as well? No. Magazines, no. Um, but magazines, if you have Kindle limited, you get them on the Kindle.

Um, cookbooks, yes, you can send them to your Kindle because they show up as Kindle books. Um, so it just depends, like, it depends on, the magazine is as separate. It's kind of like a, it comes in Libby form, but cookbooks, you can send them under your Kindle and there'll be pictures and there'll be color and stuff.

You just, um, you're, you, if you're looking at a paperwhite or a Kindle, like in my, in my happy. Yeah. So capability of the device itself. Right. Yeah. Nice. I think that we got a ton of information. I don't know about you guys, but I learned a lot and I can get a ton of stuff now from the library. So I'm going to go and like research all these new libraries and apply for some non resident cards.

Yes, yes, let me know. And let us know if you guys have any other ones that Laura maybe didn't mention, you know, leave them in the comments or send us a DM, let us know if you've tried any of these. Also, tell us what you thought of them, you know, what do you usually use them the most for, or what do you use your local library for so I, I think that it's all great information and.

Even like something like the seeds that you talked about. So we learned a lot today, Laura. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing all of your knowledge. We'll have to pick your brain again for some Kindle Unlimited stuff. That sounds good. Thank you so much for having me. And guys, I'm going to leave all the links to Laura's website.

So check out her blog, what to read next blog, and also her podcast. She has a ton of fun author interviews for you guys to like deep dive and listen to for weeks. Uh, and also I'll leave links to the posts that she talked about so you can go and check out more in depth previews on the services that she talked about as well.

So thank you so much for listening to us guys and we'll see you again on the next episode. Bye. Bye.

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