Ebooks Now Available From Pocahontas County Libraries

Marlinton, WV – Great news for Pocahontas County Free Library members who have e-readers; you can now check out ebooks and e-audio books using your library card and an online application. Head Librarian Vicky Terry explains how it came about.

“We have joined with a consortium of other libraries called West Virginia Reads,” she says. “And through this group we were able to subscribe to a service from Overdrive. We can now provide ebooks for our patrons and it’s so exciting.”

She says even Kindle users can use this service.

“This is very new because for the longest time Kindle users could not borrow library books from anyone,” she says. “So if you have a Kindle or a Nook or a Sony e-reader, you are able to borrow library books. You do have to have a library card because when you go to the website, you check in with your library card number and a pin number.”

She says to create your own Personal Identification Number or PIN, you need just go to the Pocahontas County Free Libraries website at www.pocahontaslibrary.org and click on the PCFL Catalog link.

“If you follow that link and click My Account’, you can select your own PIN number,” says Terry. “Once you get that you can go to the Overdrive website and log in, create an account there, and you’re ready to go. When you get to the Overdrive website, the first thing they ask you to do is select a library, and there’s a drop down menu, and Pocahontas County is not in that list; you have to pick Greenbrier County. “

“Greenbrier County is our service area and they paid the entrance fee for us to join this group.”

Similar to shopping for an ebook online, you can browse through available titles, adding those that interest you into your cart’.

“You have 30 minutes to leave it in your cart before it’ll just blip back into the list of available books,” she says. “And just like the regular library, if somebody has the ebook checked out, you have to wait for it; unfortunately only one person can check out an ebook or an e-audio book at a time. But they have a waiting list, and when the book is available, they’ll send you an email telling you your book is available, you have three days to go check it out.”

Terry says you can check out ebooks for one, two or three weeks. For Kindle users, when you check a book out, it’s sent to your Amazon “Manage My Kindle account” just like ebooks purchased through that site. She says there are about 1300 ebooks and over 1500 audio books currently available, thanks in part to partnerships in the consortium with libraries in larger counties like Cabell and Raleigh.

The cost is not cheap – it costs $100.00 to purchase an ebook, and it can only be checked out 26 times before a library must purchase it again. Some publishers have outright refused to allow their books to be included in online lending library, and some ebooks are still inaccessible by the Kindle e-reader.

If you have any questions, Terry says she’d be happy to help you – just give her a call at the library, 304-799-4165.