Library Blog

Our Library in the Cloud

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

When we last featured our circulating e-book collection on the Library blog in 2015, we had just launched with a small opening day collection and a bit of trepidation as to how members would react. We are pleased to say that the response among Library users has been excellent. Nearly 600 members have now signed up to use Cloud Library (during a recent merger and rebranding, "3M" was dropped from their name), and since going live items in our e-book collection have circulated approximately 6,300 times. In 2016, there were 3,787 e-book checkouts. Lists of the Library’s most popular e-book titles can be found at the bottom of this post.

Our e-book collection has 800 titles as of mid-March 2017, with new titles added a couple of times a month. We usually announce that new titles have arrived via Twitter and Facebook, so if you use social media be sure to follow us. Most of the collection (about 59 percent) is adult fiction, with adult nonfiction comprising about 20 percent. The remaining 21 percent are the Children’s and Young Adult collections, carefully curated by Children’s Library staff. We generally purchase new and popular titles, with the holds queues for our print collection serving as the primary guide for book selection. However, we continue to purchase a variety of backlist titles that build upon the foundation of classics and old favorites purchased for our opening day collection. 

If the selection of latest releases does not suit you or the holds lists are too long, scroll down our collection page and explore the area below the monthly new release shelves. Here you will find the Fiction, Nonfiction, and Mystery shelves where older titles are arranged by category (“older” can mean releases from a several months ago or several decades ago). A selection of perennially popular authors at the Society Library resides on the NYSL Favorite Authors shelf, serving as a growing “greatest hits” sampler from the hundreds of thousands of volumes in our print collection. There are 173 authors currently represented here by one title each, although you can find additional titles from many of the authors by using the collection search feature. Our Classics shelf has 109 titles, canonical works that you may want to revisit or have always meant to read. This is where you will find books by Trollope, Henry James, Dickens, Austen, and more. The New York Review Books shelf has a selection of titles from NYRB’s esteemed classics series, including authors like Elizabeth Taylor, John Williams (Stoner), George Simenon, Stefan Zweig, and many more. Down “below the fold,” you will also find titles for younger readers on the Young Adult and Children’s shelves. 

If you have not tried Cloud Library, pick up a brochure at the Reference Desk, or go to our online instructions page. Ask a staff member if you have any questions. If there is a title you would like to request, or an author’s work you would like to see represented, send us an e-mail. Although we still hope to see you at the circulation desk or in the stacks, the Library’s collection of electronic resources—including circulating e-books—also provides exciting potential for remote users. 

Links: Browse Our E-Book Collection | Introduction & Instructions | FAQ | Previous Cloud Library Blog Post 

Most Popular E-books

1. City on Fire | Garth Risk Hallberg

2. My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels, Book 1| Elena Ferrante

3. Sport and a Pastime | James Salter

4. Missing Person | Patrick Modiano

5. Between the World & Me | Ta-Nehisi Coates

Most Popular in 2016

1. Improbability of Love | Hannah Rothschild

2. City on Fire | Garth Risk Hallberg

3. The Romanovs, 1613-1918 | Simon Sebag Montefiore

4. Invention of Nature: Alexandre von Humboldt’s New World | Andrea Wulf

5. 4-way tie:  A Sport and a Pastime  | James Salter; My Name is Lucy Barton | Elizabeth Strout; SPQR:  a History of Ancient Rome | Mary Beard; The Little Red Chairs | Edna O’Brien

 

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