Thing 11 covered ebooks available at local libraries, however, Thing 12 covers other apps that provide free ebook content. I found Thing 12 to be especially interesting because I hadn’t realized there were free apps to get ebooks from outside of the library. Although many of the titles are classics due to public domain copyrights, this could be very handy for when students need a classic for school, and the shelves are bare! I thought it was great that an audiobook app was mentioned as well as an app that features ebooks, but allows people to connect with each other via the app.
I decided to try Free Books. I thought it was cool that book covers were featured in the app. There were genres to click on and inside were blurbs about the genre that highlighted many book titles. Also included in the genre was the ability to browse books by book cover –great for people who like to browse visually (I know, I know, shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but…). This made it easy because often patrons will want books of a particular “type” so I really liked the genre browse-ability factor.
Once you find a book you like, you can click on the title and it will open some basic information such as author, year published, languages available to read in, description about the book is about, etc. There are also some tabs along the top that let you see what reviews others have given the book (stars and written reviews) and suggestions based on the current pick (which are pretty vague as it just reverts back to a couple of categories, but still somewhat helpful).
Downloading the book was a breeze; all I had to do was hit the download button and it appeared in the app under Library ready to be clicked and opened. The text is clear and easy to read, a good size for reading and keeps your place if you go out of the book and come back in.
I can’t imagine wanting to read a long book like this on a small mobile device such as a smart phone (maybe an ipad/tablet, but a phone seems really small), but I know that there are people interested in that.
Based on the extreme ease of use (why, oh why can’t Overdrive be so simple?!? I know, I know, copyright protections, but this was almost just TOO easy!), ability to browse by genre, ability to search by author/title (and it is very intuitive!), clear text, and the app remembering where you left off I’d have to say this is a most excellent app and I would highly recommend it for patrons looking to e-read some of the classics.
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