A lot of the Tennessee State money is now going toward a new program called R.E.A.D.S. On the website http://reads.lib.overdrive.com, you can download popular digital books with your Ardmore Public Library Card. When you first go on the site, you will find a page that has the categories of “New Additions,” “Recently Returned,” “Science Fiction & Fantasy,” “All Audio Books,” and “All e-books.” E-books are full copies of books that you can read from your computer screen. Under this category are 1,177 titles. The audio books can be downloaded to any MP3 format and listened to at your convenience. There are over 2,071 audio books titles. All titles can be checked out for a two-week period. This is where you will need your library card. The eleven-digit number on the back of your card will allow you the freedom of checking out any title located on this website.
There is also another free Tennessee Library service that is often overlooked. It is called the Tennessee Electronic Library. On this site are tens of millions of documents (magazines and other articles) available to all citizens of Tennessee. To begin using the TEL databases, just visit www.tennessee.gov/tsla/tel. Next, click on the county that you live in for example, Giles County, and then on Ardmore Public Library. This will allow you on 13 plus sites beginning with the Gale Virtual Reference Library. Other services on the www.tennessee.gov/tsla website are the Library for the Blind & Physically Handicapped (Free Books), Genealogy, and the TN Public Library Catalog where you will find books from The Ardmore Public Library catalog.
Also found in the AARP Bulletin February ’07 issue is an announcement “Read to me” by Barbara Basler. This article addresses a free service that provides tape-recorded articles from more than 100 publications. The choice Magazine Listening program, created by the nonprofit Lucerna Fund, offers eight hours of articles, short stories, poetry and interviews selected from current publications. The cassette tapes, which go out to subscribers every other month, require a four-track player-eligible listeners can get a free one from the Library of Congress. For details, go to www.choicemagazinelistening.org or call 1-888-724-6423 toll free.