Category Archives: library

Birmingham, Book Collecting, Book Sale, Bookstores, library

Homewood Library Used-Book Store

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Here is a quick photo tour of the used-book store that is maintained by the Homewood Library’s Friends of the Library Group. It’s located downstairs at the Homewood Library and is open:

  • Monday-Friday 10:00 a.m.-4 p.m.
  • Saturday 10:00 a.m.-2 p.m.

 

This is by far the best library bookstore to visit if you are looking for magazines. They have shelves and shelves of magazines that I’ve never heard of, plus all of the big popular ones. If magazines and journals are your thing – THIS is the shop you have to visit. Magazines cost ten cents each.

The whole used-bookstore is pretty big, divided among three rooms, with a so-so turnover in the Fiction shelves. Most everything is discarded library books. Though finding donated copies (with no library stickers or stamps) isn’t uncommon. I have seen First Edition books priced at $5 and they do keep a 50 cent table, which is always worth glancing through when you’re at the library.

The first thing to do when you arrive is look down just inside the door. There is a cardboard box there with Free Stuff in it. It’s usually just magazines, maps, photos, etc. but you may find something there. Also, in the magazine room, there is another bookshelf unit and another box with free books and magazines for the taking.

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Birmingham, Book Sale, Bookstores, library

Vestavia Hills Library Used-Book Store

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Here is a quick photo tour of the Vestavia Hills Friends of the Library used-book store. The Vestavia Hills Library has a new building and with it comes a new bookstore space. While this shop is about a third of the size of the original used-book store, the quality of books found is always high and the volunteers manning the desk are always up for a friendly chat.

One of the main reasons I really like this store is that it has a very high concentration of donated hardcovers. And they are all still $3! That means no library stickers to peel off, stamps, etc. I once found a signed first-edition (with verification crd from the Alabama Booksmith) of Brooks’ The People of the Book and all I had to fork over was $3. That’s the kind of thing that makes digging through bookstores so much fun.

Once you enter the library, the bookstore will be to your left. It’s worth stopping in to see if any other signed gems have slipped through the cracks and made it to the shelves. Their hours are 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday. They are closed Saturday and open on Sundays 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.

Birmingham, Bookstores, Events, library

Used-Book Sale Downtown Birmingham

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The book sale ends February 4th. So you have a few more days to get to the downtown branch of the Birmingham Library and scope out the books. The deal is you pay $6 and get an official library re-usable tote to stuff with as many books as you can. The only catch is that your selection is restricted to the “overstock” carts outside of the bookstore. So the books inside the shop (still priced only 50 cents to $2) are off limits.

You can expect lots of Clancy, King and Wouk out on the carts, but there are lots of other things too. Two carts are crammed with newer kids’ books.

Just inside the Friends of the Library shop is the new merch room with lots of branded shirts, mugs cups and bags. It’s worth checking out as well.

E-Books, library, News

Getting Library Books on Your Kindle

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UPDATE #2: Looks like the Kindle library lending options are live for the JCLC system!

UPDATE : OverDrive has released a statement saying that the library system will work with WhisperSync to push notes, bookmarks, etc. to the ebook if you buy it or check it out again. But you still can only download library ebooks via WiFi or the USB cable. /stop/

News broke today that Amazon officially started letting people, in select parts of Washington state, check out and read library books on their Kindles. This program is in partnership with OverDrive, which is a good move I think, but Amazon should have worked harder to integrate. For starters, they’re wrapping all of the ePubs in their proproetary .tpz format. Whatever. But the “ugh” part really kicks in during checkout.

Checking out JCLC books via the OverDrive app is a painless one, once you get the Adobe DRM straight. But Amazon has added a couple more clicks and a couple more steps to the process. So to read library books on your Kindle you:

  1. log in to your library
  2. check out book
  3. which take you to Amazon.com where you have to log in there
  4. check out book there which lets you download the file
  5. hook your Kindle up via USB, drag and drop the Kindle library book

 

Now I don’t live in Seattle and have yet to do this myself. I’m very thankful to the Seattle Times crew and their detailed photos and coverage.

I am not a software engineer and I’m sure it’s very hard to get the big independent systems to work together on something as complicated as checking out files that need to expire. But it’s Amazon! If anyone has the customer-centered focus, skills and dollars, to bring harmony to the library>>OverDrive>>Kindle>>library cycle, it’s them.

No word yet on when the rest of the country might get the service, but no doubt Kindle users will be very glad to have access to their library’s ebook collections, no matter how cumbersome the checkout process gets.