When thinking of a library, what immediately comes to mind? Dusty books long-forgotten on dimly lit, claustrophobia-inducing aisles? Maybe a dead zone of silence pierced only by the shushing of overzealous noise police? What may have been the ways of other libraries from decades gone by, the Beatrice Public Library is on a mission to dispel these misconceptions and give the community a look at what a 21st century library can offer!
While the keystone of any library will always be its variety of physical materials, there are a myriad of online resources just waiting to be explored. With an active library card, library users can have access to the following, all for the price of free!
Biblionix Online Catalog - Enjoy the convenience of browsing the library’s catalog of physical materials online, accessing and managing your account, place reserves, and renewing checked out materials.
Libby - Access a wide selection of eBooks and audiobooks to borrow and use on your favorite Android, Apple, PC, tablet, and Kindle devices!
Ancestry.com Library Edition - Make genealogy work a breeze with the Library Edition of ancestry.com. With over 30 billion records, ancestry.com is a leading resource for researching records.
Chilton Library - Having car troubles? Rather than wading through dozens of useless instructional videos or wiki help guides, find the correct information you need to get on the road again with repair, maintenance, and service information, VIN decoder for vehicle information, manuals, diagnostics, diagrams, troubleshooting guides, and more.
Hoopla - Offering a collection of over 6,000 movies and 300,000 music albums, Hoopla is a great supplement to your streaming needs and may even be able to eliminate one of the many streaming services from the monthly budget!
NebraskaAccess - Managed by the Nebraska Library Commission, NebraskaAccess provides all Nebraska residents with databases for biographies, book recommendations, science and technology resources, genealogy searches, small businesses, and more.
Freegal - No need to wait for the endless barrage of commercials to play out before listening to a favorite song. Offering over 1 million albums and 18 million songs to choose from, Freegal is the perfect service for streaming music; and with 5 hours of streaming and 3 permanent downloads available per month, a personal collection of great music can begin to grow in no time!
Newsbank - As the largest repository of reliable information, Newsbank offers an enormous archive of digital, searchable newspapers including the Beatrice Daily Sun, Lincoln Journal Star, Omaha World Herald, USA Today and others!
Coming soon:
Heritage Hub - In conjunction with Newsbank, Heritage Hub will soon become available as another resource for genealogy research. With its own growing collection of obituaries and articles, and the ability to access this will be a welcome addition to the Beatrice Library’s current genealogy resources.
Heritage Quest - Coming back from a brief hiatus, Heritage Quest will once again be returning to the Beatrice Library as another complimentary resource for genealogy research.
In an era of ever-increasing online streaming and consumption of digital materials, a library is worth so much more than simply checking out a physical book (although we do have over 100,000 physical materials to choose from as well!). Free access for Gage County residents to numerous online streaming services and resources is just a library card away! If you’re interested in signing up for a library card or would like more information on the resources available through the Beatrice Public Library, please call 402-223-3584 or visit us at 100 North 16th Street.
Joanne Neemann
Library Director