Show Notes
Patricia and Nicole are back to continue their chat about how effing rad public libraries are. They share some of the free online resources that they’ve encountered through public libraries and go down a lot of rabbit holes.
Mentioned on the show:
- Hila Gelato
- Octavia Lab at the Los Angeles Public Library
- Gideon the Ninth (Locked Tomb Series) by Tamsyn Muir
- Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts by Rebecca Hall, illustrated by Hugo Martinez
- WorldCat.org
Find the full show notes and official transcript on our website: eedapod.com
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Sound editing by Jen Zink
Transcript
Music: [Intro Music]
Patricia: Salutations netizens! Welcome to Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice, the podcast for folks who would rather curl into the fetal position than lean in. I’m your host, Patricia Elzie-Tuttle.
Nicole: And I’m your totally rad and relatable web surfer, Nicole Elzie-Tuttle. We are recording this show on April 8th, 2024.
Patricia: Ah, web surfing.
Nicole: Yeah, surfing the web.
Patricia: Yeah. Back when you know, the internet wasn’t cool and they had to convince people, it was cool, so we surfed it.
Nicole: Well, it was on computers, and computers were for nerds.
Patricia: Clearly. I mean, maybe still. I’m also a nerd, so I’m not one to talk.
Nicole: Yeah, I have no place to speak. I was a nerd with a computer that didn’t have access to the internet, so.
Patricia: Yeah. Same. Same. So, I want to share that I recently had gotten my truck back from the mechanic after getting the catalytic converter stolen last May. And then a few weeks ago, I went to drive somewhere, and my truck had been just sitting out, just sitting out, and so it was pretty dirty, and there were some cobwebs in it, so I went to drive to the grocery store, and as I was driving, I was like two blocks from home, a spider started coming down from the rearview mirror, and I swerved, almost died, didn’t die, but I was like, you know what? I’m going home and Nicole can bring me to the grocery store when she gets home from work. I let the spider take the wheel. This is Spider’s truck now.
Nicole: Yeah, I remember getting that text message. You’re like, I almost died. You have to take me to the grocery store.
Patricia: [Laughter] Yeah. And so you were also like, okay, I don’t like you being scared of your own vehicle. So you found someone who does some mobile auto detailing.
Nicole: And this man detailed the heck out of your truck.
Patricia: Yeah. So, I have never had this truck detailed in 21 years that I’ve had it, and you could tell this was this man’s special interest. He was so excited not only to clean my truck, but to tell me all the ways in which he was going to clean the truck and steam off the old stickers and steam the vents and clean the upholstery and I found it really refreshing to hear him be so passionate about this thing he clearly loved doing like he clearly loved it and I don’t know. I just feel more connected to people when I get to hear them talk about, like, that thing they’re really into.
Nicole: Yeah, he just loved making your truck look pretty and it looks new. Like, it’s so shiny and radiant in a way that I haven’t seen in ages. It stands out from other cars on the street now.
Patricia: It does. It does. He did work on it for, like, nine hours. He got a little carried away. He was, he was in, he was in the zone. We had to cut him off. He came back the next day. But I am happily going to write all the five star reviews for this man.
Nicole: And I can’t wait for you to drive your truck and feel comfortable and happy in it.
Patricia: Ditto.
Nicole: I’m really looking forward to that.
Patricia: So, since last episode, also, I had a birthday.
Nicole: Yeah. I hope you all sang Happy Birthday to Patricia.
Patricia: Please don’t. It’s the worst song. Like, it’s not a good song.
Nicole: So, if you want to send us videos of…
Patricia: Nope. Absolutely not. No. But, we went to my new favorite place
Nicole: Your new favorite place?
Patricia: New favorite place. Which is called Hila Gelato in San Francisco. It’s over on Valencia and it is well, they serve gelato. She makes gelato. She also makes desserts Including, like, single cups of tiramisu with just like a spoon in it, you just grab it out of the fridge and it’s ready to eat. But the gelato machines are, like, each gelato has its own machine and they’re all in this stainless steel counter and that’s what they’re served out of.
So I think a lot of people, when they think about gelato, they think of these places that have big mounds of ice cream that are brightly colored and decorated, and that is how you could tell the gelato is not going to be good. Good gelato should be in a machine, in a container, under a cover. You shouldn’t even be able to see it unless the cover is clear.
It’s like, what are these other people with the flashy gelato? Like, what are they trying to prove? Like, they’re trying to sell it to you. And gelato doesn’t need to be sold if it’s good.
Nicole: No, it just needs to be eaten.
Patricia: Just needs to be eaten. So I had an affogato. I also had some tiramisu flavored gelato.
And I can’t remember the other flavor. Oh, stracciatella, which is like a chocolate chip. So good.
Nicole: I got like a double chocolate.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: And it was, I don’t usually eat my whole serving of gelato, and I totally ate the whole thing.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: That’s how you know it was good.
Patricia: Yeah. I feel like I’m going to spend a lot of time there this summer.
Nicole: Yeah. Also, a reminder to our listeners. We have a Patreon that you should definitely subscribe to. And if you subscribe at the one level that we have right now, the Helpful Helper level, which is $3 a month, you can fill out a survey and we will send you a rainbow window cling prism thing with our logo on it.
Patricia: [Laughter] Was that a technical term?
Nicole: Yeah, a rainbow prism window cling thing.
Patricia: Okay.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Exactly.
Nicole: Just like that. Yeah.
Music: [Interlude Music]
Patricia: So, today we are back for part two of our two part series on the many ways in which libraries are awesome. We are recording this on April 8th, and April 7th through 13th is National Library Week, so that is just snuggled between our Library Love Letter episodes, so we’ve made a nice little library panino.
Nicole: Is that a panino biblioteca?
Patricia: I think it’d be like un panino delle biblioteche, like a sandwich of libraries.
Nicole: Huh….
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: I’m gonna need a really big panini press for that.
Patricia: Okay.
Nicole: [Laughter]
Patricia: Without diving into archives, which are a whole other thing that I really love, our last episode was about some of the amazing things that you may be able to get at a library in person.
There was one more thing that I thought of that I wanted to mention about in person things, and I’m thinking specifically of the Octavia Lab at the Los Angeles Public Library. The Octavia Lab is a makerspace, and I know some other libraries in other places also have makerspaces. The Octavia Lab has 3D printers, laser cutters, sewing machines, embroidery machine, a photography setup with backdrops and lighting.
It also has setups for you to podcast and livestream, among other fun audiovisual activities.
Nicole: One other thing that wanted to kind of call out that we forgot to mention is that some libraries offer hygiene products and also some specifically offer period products, which I think is really, really cool.
Patricia: Yeah, I want to call out like there are… having these items can be controversial to some people because they think that offering these items are beyond the scope of a library and like, I get it, but personally, I love it. I appreciate the stepping up and providing community care. And there are a lot of librarians who are on the same page.
Nicole: Yeah, well, and considering that, especially in big cities, there are a lot of people in need of these products who frequent the libraries sometimes, it seems like a really easy match.
Patricia: They’re also very expensive, right? Like these products can be very costly. And even, you know, in, in places like where we are in the Bay Area, like the cost of living is already so high and groceries are already so high.
And, you know, some people may, may need some of these products just to help them get through the end of the month, even.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Now, a reminder that not everything we mentioned in last episode, or even things that we’ll be talking about in this episode, is available at all public libraries. This is definitely a, your mileage may vary, and also why we highly encourage seeking access to as many public library systems as possible.
Patricia: Absolutely, but also just start with the one where you’re at and explore, because what we’re going to talk about today is with your library card you can likely access a number of things online through the library website. After you get your card, you don’t even need to leave your home for most of these things.
Nicole: This is legitimately one of my favorite library things, is all of the online stuff. Like, yes, I love going to a library, and I love seeing all the things they offer, but I really love exploring the vast array of things that libraries offer online. Like, the online resources are just so deep sometimes.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: And they’re so cool. The first one, gotta start out with, is the one I use like every day. It’s the Libby app. It is possibly the most common app that gets paired with libraries online.
Patricia: It’s either Libby or Hoopla, which I’ll get to Hoopla in a minute.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Yeah. Well, some libraries have both.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: I know a lot of our local ones use Libby a lot, and Libby is your one stop shop for ebooks and audiobooks and everything of that nature.
We almost never get audiobooks through purchase platforms anymore.
Patricia: Rarely. Rarely. We almost always use Libby. Like, there is no need for Audible, especially.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: But, you know, we do get some stuff from Libro.fm. Like, if I, if I don’t want to be on the waitlist for the library. But our trick for the library waitlist is if you have multiple library cards, you can enter all your library card numbers into Libby and it can do a deep search. So if you’re searching for a book, you can basically have it search all your libraries you have cards for, and it will tell you where it’s available currently, or it will put you in the shortest waitlist if there are waitlists.
Nicole: Yeah. I say the only other books that I make you get through Libro are like, ones that I’m gonna listen to over and over and don’t want to wait for, like
Patricia: Absolutely.
Nicole: Like the Locked Tomb books that I listen to every couple of months.
Patricia: You know, using your library does support authors, and there are some authors who I’m like, yes, I want to buy your book, I want to pay money for your book, and so I use Libro for those.
But yeah, having multiple libraries to choose from in Libby are amazing. Um, as far as ebooks go, I feel like I’m getting the best deal when I borrow craft books, especially if I want like one pattern or like one, one particular thing out of the craft book and similarly cookbooks. Cookbooks are so expensive.
Nicole: Yeah, this is, I love it, because we can rent a cookbook, leaf through it.
Patricia: Borrow, not rent, we’re not paying for it.
Nicole: That’s right, we’re borrowing. Borrow a cookbook, and like, go through it, and like, find a recipe we like.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: And, can I say that we screenshot it?
Patricia: I mean, you’re not hearing it from us.
Nicole: Yeah, definitely don’t do that, everyone.
Patricia: Definitely don’t do that. [Laughter]
But, that being said, we have also gone through and looked at cookbooks to see if they’re ones worth buying because what has happened in my past a lot is I am like, I want this cookbook and then it ends up I only want one recipe out of the book and the cookbook’s like $39.95.
Nicole: Yeah, or, like, I think it’s gonna be a cookbook I really want, and then I borrow it from the library, and I discover that, like, the first hundred pages is this, like, weird, extended blog post about, like, cooking in the kitchen’s granny or something and just get to the recipes.
Patricia: I’m sure your grandmother is lovely, and also…
Nicole: And also, I don’t like that’s not the, why I bought this book. I bought this book for the recipes. And then there’s, as you said, like one recipe that I would ever make again.
Patricia: Yeah, yeah. I also recently discovered getting picture books through Libby. And Libby also, I want to note, it doesn’t require that you have, uh, an e-reader like a Kobo or a Kindle or anything like that.
Libby, the app, you can read through the app on your phone if you’re getting a book. You could read on a tablet. You could read probably on your computer.
Nicole: And this is where it really stands out for things like cookbooks, craft books, children’s picture books.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: ‘Cause you can see them in full color.
Patricia: Yeah. Um, and also comic books and graphic novels, too.
Nicole: Oh, yeah. Comic books are on there.
Patricia: Yeah. Another thing I recently discovered is sheet music through Libby. I could get, like, vocal selections and things like that. So, that’s pretty cool. And also, you recently pointed out, Travel guides.
Nicole: Yeah, I was just leafing through it before this, we sat down to record, I was looking at Libby at my, one of our local libraries, and there was a whole travel guide section.
Patricia: I hadn’t even thought about travel guides, especially electronically, I guess,
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Because, one, they’re going to take up less space in your travel bag, but also, they’re updated every year. They’re outdated so fast.
Nicole: Yeah. So, like, having a shelf full of travel guides from ten years ago isn’t necessarily helpful, but also if you’re trying to scope out a place that you’re considering traveling, borrow a couple travel guides real quick.
Patricia: Yeah. I also, so I mentioned Hoopla. Some libraries have both Libby and Hoopla, some libraries only have Hoopla, and Hoopla is, I don’t use it as much, but what I like about it is that things are available immediately, like I don’t have to hop on a waitlist necessarily. And Hoopla does even more things, like beyond just ebooks and audiobooks.
They also have, like, bundles of, like, thematic electronic resources, like a bunch of, here’s an, I don’t know, an animal bundle for your kid. And so it’ll have, like, books and magazines and videos and, like, all these things all together. And it’s all electronic. It’s really, really cool.
Nicole: Is that the one that also sometimes has, like, TV shows and movies on it?
Patricia: Yes.
Yeah, I remember I was able to go on Hoopla. We were at someone’s house who didn’t have Netflix.
Nicole: Oh, right.
Patricia: And I went on Hoopla, and I pulled up the Great British Bake Off, and then I cast it from my phone to their large television. And showed them the show that they don’t have access to because they don’t have Netflix, but with a library card.
Yeah.
Nicole: Yeah, I’m just still like, that whole scenario is just like, too cool at this point.
Some other cool things you can access through your library, not necessarily on Libby or Hoopla, but you’ll have to like log on to the library website to access is newspapers. You can access newspapers like the L.A. Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, probably your local newspapers, but also other magazines like National Geographic’s archives and stuff like that are often available through your libraries, and this is great because you then get behind the paywall for these newspapers.
Patricia: Absolutely. It is definitely a legal way to get behind the paywalls, you know. There are other things I’m sure there are like browser extensions and there are tricks to get you behind paywalls to just grab an article or something like that.
But I noticed with the New York Times the other day, I logged into, I think it was our Oakland library and it basically is like, yeah, just sign up with your email here and we’ll give you the next 72 hours free. And then after the 72 hours we’re up, I just do that again.
Nicole: Huh, that’s really easy.
Patricia: Yeah. So there’s also, I noticed, uh, historical papers too.
Nicole: Like historical newspapers?
Patricia: Like historical newspapers. So newspapers that are no longer running or in print, but if you’re looking for an old article from an old paper.
Nicole: So this isn’t like the archives of the New York Times, like back issues.
Patricia: Well, actually there are some electronic archives.
Yeah, it’s, this isn’t the archives in the way I was talking about having, having an author’s papers, like UC Berkeley has Mark Twain’s papers, right? But there are electronic archives of old newspapers that you could search for old articles.
Nicole: That can be really helpful.
Patricia: Right?
Nicole: I know people don’t think about it a lot, but if you get curious about world events that happened in the past, having access to the newspapers of the time really gives you a lens into how people perceived what was happening around them.
One of the ones that I found really fun, one of the resources that I found really fun, that was available through one of our local libraries, was access to genealogy resources, in particular, Ancestry.com. It wasn’t access in the way where you, like, set up your own account and can build your own family tree in Ancestry, but you could navigate through and utilize all their resources.
So I could go through and find, like, my great great grandmother’s birth certificate or something like that, cause it’s publicly available and then just build my own family tree, you know, on my computer or on paper or whatever, but normally these like just access to something like Ancestry can be up to like 60 a month.
Patricia: Yeah, really expensive.
Nicole: It’s not cheap. But the other cool thing you can find sometimes is genealogy resources for specific groups of people. Um, we saw one that was a, how to focus on genealogy for African Americans or we saw another one that was for Chinese folks.
Patricia: Yeah. For those of you who are unaware or haven’t thought about this.
Genealogy for Black people, that is, those of us in America who are descendants of enslaved people, genealogy can be downright impossible. Um.
Nicole: That’s putting it lightly.
Patricia: You know, one of the examples I give is my maiden name, the first half of our last name, Elzie, was from my father, but it’s, Elzie is a German name. And my family’s not German.
Nicole: You don’t say.
Patricia: [Laugh] But the people a couple hundred years ago who owned my ancestors were a German family with the last name Else, E L S E, and Elzie is a bastardization of that name. And so not even really having a name to follow to find ancestors for, again, Black Americans can be really difficult.
Rebecca Hall talks about this in a non fiction graphic novel called Wake, The Hidden History of Women Led Slave Revolts. And she also talks about how, and I know I’m going off the rails here, but stay with me. In the transatlantic slave trade, so people were capital, people were products, and they had to be insured, so some of those insurance companies are still around today.
In England, and possibly even in the U. S., and in this graphic novel, I’ll link it in the show notes, she talks about being in London and trying to get access, like asking for access to their archives, and they were very unhappy, and were like, no, we don’t have anything like that here, but of course they have records.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: But they’re private companies.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: So, back to the library, genealogy, Black people, there are so few resources accessible for us, and I just love that the library has what they have.
Nicole: Yeah, and I think that makes it, like, just thinking about how difficult it can be and needing to access records in a different way.
Like, for my family who is a white family going back generations. I can trace them back, like some branches back to when they arrived in the U.S. But their names were written down in the census records.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: And oftentimes when I’m looking back at some of these census records, the names of enslaved people often were not.
Patricia: Yeah, you know, we are always bumping up against privilege,
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: uh, in our own lives in ways when that we don’t expect, and I think this was one of them. But yeah, again, thank goodness for the library.
Nicole: Yeah, now we have access to a new resource if we want to start running the genealogy of your family.
Patricia: Start diving into that.
Nicole: Oof.
Patricia: [Laughing]
Nicole: We’re going to branch off from that here and you can access apps to help you learn languages like Duolingo, but there’s a lot of other platforms and materials out there that can help you learn languages. And a lot of these are available through the library, including ones that are like Rosetta Stone, which is
Patricia: Like, that’s like the OG language learning.
Nicole: Yeah. And it’s like $200 for, is it a lifetime subscription?
Patricia: I think a lifetime subscription is $200. I remember back when it used to be like the yellow box with CDs.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: It was like $600. Like, it was so expensive.
Nicole: They were very expensive. But you can now just get it through the library.
Patricia: Yeah, and since Rosetta Stone, and I think the other one I looked at was Mango Languages,
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: that was another language learning thing through the library.
Since they have been around longer, I find that they have more languages than something like a Duolingo, even though I love my Duolingo. You know, I’ve been having a hard time finding where to learn Tagalog. There are so many dialects, but Rosetta Stone has Tagalog.
Nicole: Oh.
Patricia: And that was like the only place I found it, aside from paying for a Tagalog specific language learning app.
Nicole: Yeah. Along the lines of learning languages, the library also has a lot of resources for people for whom English is a second language to help them practice and learn their English language skills.
Patricia: Yeah, now that you’re saying that and I realize, hey, so I am not on top of everything, but the amount of hubris as English speakers to call all English learning ESL. Like, English as a Second Language. Like, anyone who speaks any other language automatically, like, English is gonna be the next one
Nicole: Oh yeah.
Patricia: they wanna speak. Whereas English, for some people, is like their fifth language.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: But we still, like, it’s so centered on the colonizer’s language that all English learning is assumed to be the second language.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: I’m sorry, I’m just off the rails again.
Nicole: No, it’s okay, but as we were looking at this, it was, there were very clearly, like, resources for, like, Spanish speakers wanting to learn English, Chinese speakers for wanting to learn English.
Patricia: Absolutely.
Nicole: Yes, I know there are multiple Chinese languages.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: It was not just, like, Spanish.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: There was, there was many different languages.
Patricia: There was multiple different languages, yeah.
Nicole: As, as a primary language wanting to learn English.
Patricia: Back to more library stuff.
Something I was surprised to find that I didn’t even know existed until we really started digging in for this episode were art and fashion resources, like databases of archived art exhibition listings, book reviews, film reviews. Like, there was a whole rabbit hole I could have gone down with that.
Nicole: Yeah, we’re definitely gonna have to sit at some point and start looking through that, because that sounds really cool. Especially for, like, exhibitions of art that we don’t have access to or, or would be really difficult for us to get to.
Patricia: Yeah. I’m also interested in the fashion resources and databases.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: One of the things I really like and that’s available through the library is access to magazines and these are like your trade available at your bookstores and grocery stores, magazines, things like Vogue. And let’s see, we mentioned Nat Geo.
Patricia: Yeah, I think, so there’s a couple ways that you can access magazines electronically through the library. Like, you can do Libby or Hoopla, but also if you go to your library’s website, there’s often a place in a menu that’s called like articles databases and e-resources and in there you could often find like magazine archives like a
Nicole: ooh
Patricia: ton of back issues of magazines and magazines are one of my favorite things to get from the digital library because they’re so expensive. And also they can easily get out of control at home.
Nicole: Oh my gosh.
Patricia: Like the magazines can just pile up. And so I feel like I’m getting an amazing deal when I borrow magazines, like old Crochet World or whatever magazines for a pattern, or like, old issues of Bon Appétit or Cook’s Illustrated, which are also very expensive, but it’s like, oh, I’m looking for this one recipe in Bon Appétit from 1988 or whatever. I just love having access to that.
Nicole: I also just like, like on a Sunday morning when I’m drinking my tea or something, sitting down and like browsing what magazines are available from the library. Just kind of scrolling through and looking at the covers and being like, does any of this look like it has something I want to read?
And like, I was scrolling, was it last weekend or something? And I saw like an issue, I think it was Vogue that had Kim Petras on the cover. And I was like, what is Kim Petras doing on the cover of Vogue? Like, I need
Patricia: Being amazing.
Nicole: Right. I’m like, I want to read this now. And I could just click on it, flip to the article, read it. And return the magazine.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: And like, I didn’t have to pay for it. I didn’t have to go find it. I could read it in full color, so I could still see the amazing photo shoots. And it was just like, cool, now I read the thing. And it amazes me, because for me, like, magazines, especially growing up, were like, they’re kind of expensive.
Patricia: Yeah, they were kind of a luxury.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: And then, like you said, they’d pile up. And because they were kind of a luxury, you didn’t want to get rid of them.
Other things you can find on your library’s website, they sometimes have really practical things, like access to consumer reports, or fire insurance maps, or auto repair guides.
Patricia: Yeah, so, I know I’m going to sound like a boomer, but I appreciate consumer reports. You know, we tend to try to find things that are long lasting or that can be repaired. We try to be as green as we can. And I can’t, like, sometimes I just can’t tell from like Amazon reviews or what have you. And so, yeah, we look to consumer reports for the best vacuum or the best, you know, whatever thing.
Nicole: Yeah, just kind of household items where we’re willing to spend a little bit more money for something that’s going to
Patricia: not immediately go in the landfill.
Nicole: Yeah, and not going to immediately break or fall apart and will do the job really well.
Things like fire insurance maps that I mentioned, this is usually for your local area. And this is a big deal in California with our wildfire seasons now.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: But it will show you, like, what areas are more likely to receive damage from things like wildfire. And you can probably in other areas find, like, flood insurance maps and things like that.
Patricia: Right.
Nicole: And then auto repair guides. Like, yes, I know you can find a video of someone fixing just about anything on YouTube, but if you want to find a manual for how to repair a vehicle and don’t want to spend the money to order it online, like, these are just available through your library.
Patricia: Yeah, related are the Photofact repair manuals that are repair manuals for small electronics, so they will provide things like schematics and repair guides and it’s really making me miss Radio Shack right now. But again, you can definitely probably find videos for everything on YouTube, but sometimes it’s nice to actually have a document to supplement that to look at.
Nicole: Again, also though, going back to our, like, not wanting to just throw something away, like, can we fix it relatively easily? And then we don’t have to buy a new one.
Also, and this is something that I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’m out of school totally, but I feel like encyclopedias used to be a bigger thing. And like, yes, we now have Wikipedia, but official encyclopedias are also a really great place to just start looking up information. And you can just find those through your library, still.
Patricia: Yeah, and I’m talking about the electronic version
Nicole: Yes.
Patricia: right, like…
Nicole: Not the, not the 30 volume World Book plus its annual updates, or the Encyclopedia Britannica whose salesperson came to your door when you were eight
Patricia: Oh my gosh.
Nicole: and talked your parents into trying to buy them.
Patricia: I think we also found, though, encyclopedia resources that were Spanish language.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: So that was pretty cool.
Nicole: Yeah. So there’s likely other non English language, um, encyclopedias out there depending on the population your library serves, but that might also be helpful for not just like listeners we have who want access to that, but I’m thinking about listeners with family members
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: who may not be as good at the internet and may not have access otherwise to places to look up just information like we would on something
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: like Wikipedia.
So helping people just get access to general information about things.
Patricia: Totally.
Related, so we, we aren’t talking too much about resources for children and teens in either last episode of this episode, but I do want to mention there’s often tutoring help, both in person and online, like online tutoring available through some library systems.
Nicole: Also, you can often access practice tests for standardized testing, like the SAT, the ACT, the GRE.
Patricia: Yeah, I think that is pretty cool.
Nicole: That’s really cool, because I remember those also being kind of expensive things.
Patricia: I’m such a nerd. Now, I’m, I’m literally in my mid 40s, I’m like. How would I do on the SAT now? Like, what if I went and took a practice?
Nicole: I’m pretty sure they’ve added, like, a whole new section to the SAT since we took it. It’s like a different test. We can’t even compare our scores to what we got when we were in high school.
Patricia: Be right back. I’m gonna go fail the SAT for fun.
Nicole: Oh my god.
Patricia: So, something that I found When we were looking up stuff for this script is if you’re an entrepreneur, some libraries have small business resources, whether it’s starting a small business, financing, a small business, managing a small business.
And, you know, there are so many. People out there that have classes and webinars on how to create your small business, but then they’re also like hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, and their whole business is teaching other people how to start a business. Like, it’s just, I don’t know, I’m overwhelmed by the amount some of these cost, and the library has so many small business resources for free.
Nicole: Yeah, I remember just trying to satisfy my own curiosity, like in my late 20s, early 30s, like, how do I start a business? What do I need to do? And just being immediately overwhelmed by the resources, like online, like it was so confusing. So having something through the library that’s like, here, here’s your first step.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Here’s how to start with your business. Like…
[Deep breath]
Patricia: Amazing.
Nicole: Yeah. It’s really, really good.
Patricia: For nonprofits there is also Foundation Directory and GuideStar that I personally use at my day job. But if you work for a smaller nonprofit, it can be incredibly helpful for things like finding organizations that might give grants, like grant making organizations, and also if you’re at a smaller organization, it’s helpful to know.
GuideStar and Foundation Directory might be free through the library, so your org doesn’t have to pay for that resource.
Nicole: Similarly, kind of related to work is we found that some of our local libraries had access to both LinkedIn Learning and Coursera, which I know most people’s jobs don’t give them access to this.
And this is where you can go to, like, pick up additional skills for your day job.
Patricia: Or, you know, I have encouraged one of my mentees to, you know, if they’re looking at a job posting or something like that and seeing, like, where they need to supplement things, like, okay, go on LinkedIn Learning. Is there a course, is there a certificate that you can do and learn this thing and then put it on your resume?
I remember on Coursera, I was like learning Python at one time, um, because there are some coding classes. But also, I found LinkedIn Learning also has, like, guitar and piano, [Laughing] which I was not expecting off LinkedIn Learning, but…
Nicole: I hope to someday see someone’s resume that’s like, I have a guitar certificate from LinkedIn Learning.
Patricia: Don’t tempt me with a good time.
Nicole: But like, like you said, these are places you could go to supplement things on your resume really easily to make sure you have a better chance at matching with a job. I know they have things like basic Excel and things like that and like basic database type work.
Patricia: Yeah, something I appreciate that the library offers often is access to the Oxford English Dictionary online. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen, like, the full OED. Like, it’s a massive multi volume behemoth.
Music: Yeah!
Patricia: And It is something, like, to access it online you have to pay for it, but not with your library card.
Nicole: It is less satisfying to go, you know, you’re not able to drop that thousands of page thing onto the cool old heavy desk at the library and flip to it to find the dirty words, though.
Patricia: [Laughing]
Nicole: Now you just type it in the thing and it tells you. You can’t just leave it open for the librarian to find.
Patricia: Please don’t. Stop.
Nicole: Along similar lines to that though, with just like reference-y manuals and things like that, we saw the Physician’s Desk Reference. Which, I’ve completely forgotten what that is.
Patricia: You know what, I have too. We have it in our notes. I remember mentioning something like, instead of looking up things on WebMD, which itself can be a nightmare, but hey, it might be helpful to someone listening.
Nicole: I think it’s like a basic reference of like medical terms and probably also like…
Patricia: Pharmaceuticals maybe?
Nicole: There may be pharmaceuticals in there and also like some basic explanations for diagnoses and things like that. That would be my guess. We’ll have to look that up.
Patricia: We’ll have to look that up.
Nicole: We’ll have to go figure out which library that was at and look it up.
[Laughing]
Patricia: Um, something I’m really excited about that one of our libraries offers is access to Creativebug.
Creativebug. Sorry, it’s not… It doesn’t have anything to do with bugs. I’m sorry. I’m looking at the, I’m looking at how excited your face looks right now.
Nicole: I’ve also forgotten what this one is, so.
Patricia: So Creativebug is where you learn how to craft. So there are watercolor classes, there are crochet classes, there are knitting classes, there are sewing classes.
There’s like all of these online videos teaching you how to do all of these crafts.
Nicole: Oh, now I’m gonna have to go because I would really love to watercolor with all of the fancy fountain pen inks we have.
Patricia: Yeah. It’s, uh, Creativebug, you know, there’s someone I follow on Instagram and she’s like, I have a new class up on Creativebug and, but I, I was at first bummed cause I was like, I can’t afford to be shelling out more money for more hobbies. Um, and, uh, but then I found the library has it, so.
Nicole: Another really cool resource that we found is citizenship resources, resources to help you get your citizenship.
Patricia: For the US.
Nicole: For the US specifically. It’d be weird, I mean, not necessarily weird, but be kind of odd if they were like the San Francisco library has resources to get you citizenship to Denmark.
Patricia: You know, I don’t know. Sometimes the librarians are wild out here.
Nicole: Yeah, that’s true.
In addition to that, though, they often had printable legal forms.
Patricia: Yeah, that was really good to see them all in one place.
Nicole: Because these can be hard to find sometimes on government web pages.
I remember hunting for some at some point and being like, why is this so difficult?
Patricia: A little change of gears. Libraries often, if they have any kind of, like, streaming video access, it is Kanopy, with a K. Often on Kanopy, it’s Oscar nominated movies, classic cinema, indie films. I remember just logging on and there was like, Moonlight, Lady Bird, the Amy Winehouse film.
There’s also a bunch of animated stuff. A lot of foreign films on Kanopy, as well as documentaries. And Kanopy is always adding new things and updating things. And, you know, there were even some, like a couple musicals I found on Kanopy that I wasn’t able to find elsewhere. They weren’t on like, you know, Netflix or Hulu or whatever.
Nicole: And we just discovered this evening, as we were looking back in the Libby app real quick, Libby has started linking out to Kanopy.
Patricia: If your library has it, yeah.
Nicole: If your library has it. So, like, that’s one easy way, if you’re not sure, and you’re not seeing it very easily on the library webpage, but you do use Libby for your library, if you go to your library’s home screen in the Libby app, they may have a link out to the Kanopy app.
We did see also that some of our libraries had, were these practice exams, or were these copies of the actual occupation exams?
Patricia: You know, that is a good question. I don’t know. I think they might have been practice exams, specifically for, like, trade occupations.
Nicole: Yeah, these were for trade occupations. And they were, they were just tests that you could practice with.
Patricia: Yeah, and like you mentioned earlier, you can often learn basic things like Microsoft Office Suite and stuff like that through the library. Sometimes there are even in person classes and sometimes there are also online resources for this.
Nicole: Aside from the, like, practice test for the SAT and stuff that I mentioned earlier, some libraries also can help you get your GED, or an online high school diploma.
And this is, like, yes, they may have some in person classes, but we saw several online classes as well to help you achieve these certificates, I guess?
Patricia: Yeah. Diploma.
Nicole: Yeah, your diploma.
Patricia: I think the last thing I’m going to mention that I am super excited about is there’s something called Broadway on Demand, which I didn’t even know what it was, but I looked and a couple of our libraries had it.
It is not only video, like, videos of shows or, like, musicals or plays and things like that, but there were also, like, dance lessons, like, videos of, like…
Nicole: I’m sorry, what?
Patricia: There was dance lessons. Like, you could take a jazz class.
Nicole: I can learn to dance like a cat?
Patricia: I don’t know about that. I don’t, I don’t know if you would be…
Nicole: Ooh, that was a good rhyme.
Patricia: I don’t know if you would be learning the choreography.
Nicole: The choreography to be Mr. Mephistopheles?
Patricia: That cursed show. Oh my gosh. Maybe that’s what I’ll do since you’re going into work, and I’ll have all this space to myself.
Nicole: You’re gonna pull up Broadway HD, sync it to our Bluetooth speaker, and…
Patricia: Yeah, Broadway On Demand, and yeah.
Nicole: Oh, broadway On Demand, not Broadway HD. That’s the pay for it streaming channel.
Patricia: That’s the pay for it, yeah.
Nicole: of Broadway shows.
Patricia: So much Broadway in this house. There is no way we can cover all the cool electronic resources available at libraries. And like we said, each library is different. Every time I go onto a library website, I find something new.
And that’s our takeaway for today. Again, libraries are so much more than books and with, like Arthur says, “having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card,” but we have access to so much and it’s part of the reason I write my newsletter and I share resources in this show is there are resources out there.
People just need to know where to find them.
Nicole: Yeah, we really encourage you to, like, go to your local public library, get a library card, like, one, explore your library in person, but then log on to the World Wide Web.
Patricia: Oh my god.
Nicole: And go to your library’s website and explore there, because there’s tons of cool things that you have access to through your library.
And sometimes even if it’s just stuff that’ll save you money, like, you don’t have to listen to all your audiobooks through…
Patricia: a paid source.
Nicole: A paid source. And there’s even like TV streaming. If you don’t want to pay a paid streaming source like that alone, I think is worth it completely, but there’s so many other cool things in there.
Music: [Interlude Music]
Patricia: For today’s resource, I actually wanna share something library related. It’s WorldCat.org, like the word, world word cat, dot org. Catalog of the world. WorldCat allows you to search for books, like mostly physical resources. I don’t know if it does e-resources anymore, but it does have sometimes curated lists of sources. So say I was searching for a particular book and I wanted to search all the libraries around me.
So not only public libraries, but it also searches some academic libraries. And so I’ll search for this book in WorldCat, and it will tell me what libraries near me have this book, or have this science journal, or have, like, all of these things. And sometimes there’s a book I’m looking for that is out of print, but a local university has it, or something like that.
And WorldCat allows you to search all of these catalogs at once. I do think the libraries need to cooperate with WorldCat and tell them what is in their collection. So it doesn’t necessarily automatically have all library collections in it, but it is pretty awesome. I love what I’m able to find.
Nicole: I think it’s also fun if you’re looking for like a very specific journal article or something.
And it’s fun to just search like the whole…
Patricia: And you need a print journal.
Nicole: You need a print journal
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: And you can just like search, because sometimes it’s just like, oh yeah, there’s a library in Milwaukee that has it. And that’s the closest one to you. You’re like, well, okay.
Patricia: Well, let me see if anyone will do an interlibrary loan for me.
Nicole: Yeah.
Hey, Patricia.
Patricia: Yeah, Nicole.
Nicole: What’s fillin’ your cup?
Patricia: So, I mean, talking about libraries always fills my cup. But, I’m gonna do something a little gross. And what is filling my cup is my birthday gift from you this year.
Nicole: Oh, gross.
Patricia: Eeeeewwww.
For those of you who didn’t see my post on Instagram, Nicole has spent the past few months tippy tapping away at her laptop working on my super secret birthday present. And so since it was my birthday, I got my present and it is two binders. And what my beautiful wife did was go through and find the uncollected nonfiction essays and interviews of Octavia E. Butler.
So they are unpublished. They’re not in collections in books that we could readily purchase. So she made a little table of contents. She also has a bunch of QR codes in one of these binders that links out to people interviewing Octavia Butler. There are just printouts of these articles from magazines, and all over the place, and they’re all just in a binder in sleeves, and then I got a second binder that has some old literary magazines that feature Octavia E. Butler. And, you know, there was a while, like, things were showing up on our doorstep from eBay, so I didn’t know what they were. But eBay pulled through, and you know, in one of these I flipped through, and Octavia E. Butler is just giving an answer to a question that they asked a bunch of science fiction writers, and it’s only like four paragraphs long or something like that.
Nicole: It was, like, a question, like, how do you imagine first contact with an alien race?
Patricia: Yeah, like something like that. I don’t know, but I am so touched and impressed by the amount of effort you put into this, and it’s just, it’s gonna fill my cup for a long time.
Nicole: Yeah, I was really excited to finally give this to you because I had, I spent all this time, like, curating and, like, sorry, that was me getting really excited and waving my hands around. Getting excited about finding things and delving deep into some libraries sometimes to see if someone had access to this journal article from 1983 that Interviewed her.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Just trying to find these things, which I know, like, really picks your librarian brain a lot.
Patricia: Yeah, no, I’m really impressed.
Nicole: Yeah, it was a lot of fun to try to find some of these things, and sometimes it was stuff that wasn’t, like, curated on any website or anything. I would actually find it in, like, the bibliography of a book of essays that someone else, like, did some scholarly work about Octavia Butler and just referenced it in a bibliography.
And, like, I had to go track that down and see if I could find it. And so now I get to also turn over all of my research materials to you.
Patricia: Yeah, I’m gonna need your, I’m gonna need to see your sources.
Nicole: Yeah.
And that’s just been, it’s been really fun. And it’s also been really fun to see you occasionally just, like, sit down and open it and get excited about things.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: That are in there.
Patricia: Nicole?
Nicole: Hmm?
Patricia: What’s filling your cup?
Nicole: Oh, well, I thought I just answered that. I’m very excited to have given you your birthday present.
Patricia: One other thing that we talked about that’s filling our cups is we have started an outdoor herb garden situation.
Nicole: Yes.
Patricia: So fingers crossed that our herbs thrive.
Nicole: Yeah, and in the meantime, it means I go out and smell our plants, because…
Patricia: Just going out sniffing plants.
Nicole: Yeah, because the sage and the rosemary smell delicious, and then there’s a little lavender plant that just smells like lavender, and it’s really nice. And then there’s peppermint, which is one of my favorite flavors, so I get really excited and go visit them in the afternoon.
Or like when I come home from work, I visit them before I come in the door.
Patricia: I’m sure the plants appreciate it.
Nicole: Yeah, they like the attention.
Patricia: Well, that’s our show for today. We’d like to thank our awesome audio editor, Jen Zink. You can find her at loopdilou.com, we’ll leave a link to that in our show notes.
Nicole: You can find the full show notes and transcript at eedapod.com, that’s E E D A P O D dot com. There you can also find a link to our Patreon, our Bookshop link, the podcast email list, and a link to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter. You can also find us on Instagram and BlueSky at eedapod, and email us at eedapod@gmail.com.
Patricia: We are nothing if not consistent.
Nicole: We would appreciate it so much if you would subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts that allow ratings. It goes really far in helping other people find us.
Patricia: We would also appreciate anyone who can subscribe to us on Patreon.
Support there is going to help us keep this show going, especially without ads. You can find us at patreon.com/eedapod.
In the meantime, we hope you find ways to be kind to yourself, drink some water, and read a book. We’ll be talking to you soon.
Nicole: So is this where I get to say, hack the library?
Patricia: Oh, no.
Nicole: No. Don’t actually hack the library, but hack the library!
Patricia: Oh my god.
Nicole: Visit their website and look at all their cool resources with your library card.