TRAVEL COMPANIONS
Our Digital Collection can travel with you. They make great travel companions.
Music, comics, videos, magazines, books and audio books in digital format — streamed or downloaded — to your mobile devices, tablets, laptops and/or desktops.
They are light, luggage-wise, but hefty, selections-wise. These travel companions are engaging, accommodating and always on-the-go 24/7. They’re free and most importantly, advertisement-free!
There are plenty of choices.
If you’re the kind who likes immersing in music, Hoopla might be the biggest secret you’d come to know. A lot of patrons have not realized that Hoopla is a vast resource of songs and music pieces. It offers a ton of albums from new releases to old favorites, from well-known performers and from different genres.
You can find soundtrack albums from recent movies (e.g. Mary Poppins Returns, A Star is Born, Bohemian Rhapsody), from sought-after Broadway Musicals (e.g. Hamilton, Wicked, Pretty Woman), and from past movie releases (e.g. Purple Rain, Love Story, Saturday Night Fever). There are tunes from animated features (e.g. Studio Ghibli music, Animania albums, Sailor Moon, cartoons) and even theme music from TV programs (e.g. Mad Men, Cheers, The Twilight Zone)!
You can enjoy this year’s music recordings as well from popular artists, holiday songs included (e.g. Twenty One Pilots, Taylor Swift, Andrea Bocelli, Lauren Daigle, Eminem, Michael Buble). You can listen away to old time favorites from the likes of Frank Sinatra, Led Zeppelin, U2, Stray Cats, Bob Marley, Prince and John Coltrane. There are amazing finds in classical and instrumental pieces from well-known symphonies and orchestras. And for the much younger ones, Hoopla offers Kidz Bop, almost all the Disney and animated movie songs you can think of, Veggie Tales, Raffi, Sesame Street, lullabies, nursery rhymes and so much more.
So there you go, something like songs from The Greatest Showman or Tupac Shakur or Children’s Music and Lullabies can be played all day long. In earbuds or whole-house loud privacy. All playlists are selected by you, u n i n t e r r u p t e d by ads. Through your Livingston Library card!
Of course, when one combines music with some reading, you’ll be in travel heaven! You can augment your listening experience with ebooks (graphic novels too!) or enjoy audio books from two sources with a comprehensive list of titles: Hoopla and Overdrive (or Libby which is Overdrive’s app for smartphones and tablets). Browse through their collections and you might be surprised at what you would find there for any age. Hoopla has a great selection of recently published books and upcoming authors, all available immediately on demand, while Overdrive has numerous popular high-demand titles, available in different formats.
If you’d prefer materials with a mix of words and images, you can flip through digital magazines from RBdigital while lovers of comics, graphic novels, manga and some illustrated series can make great finds in Hoopla and Overdrive as well.
RBdigital has magazines that offer easy reads, substantial content and specific interests (e.g. popular beauty and style magazines, Reader’s Digest, The New Yorker, PCWorld, American Girl, Minecraft World, Boating, Newsweek, Beadwork, etc.). It’s perfect as chill companions in crowded airport lounges or by colorful beach lounge chairs, and as distractions while commuting, when waiting during pick-up times, or while standing in long lines anywhere!
Now to spend time with alternate universes, browse titles in Hoopla under the comics category. There you will find trending characters like Aquaman, The Walking Dead, Doctor Who, Naruto, Avatar, Big Nate, Saga, Garfield and numerous choices from DC Comics, Marvel and other well-known publishers. Overdrive also has graphic novels and illustrated books, among which are Amulet and Dr Seuss. A pleasant drive down memory lane comes with this one when you’re into something like Archie comics or Buffy the Vampire Slayer!
Then for those times when you’d rather watch something, you can check out Hoopla for shorts, kiddie videos, movies and television programs. Some examples are the latest seasons of TV shows like Doc Martin and The Librarians (ahem!), mystery shows like Vera, Poirot and Agatha Christie, favorites like Shameless, Anthony Bourdain, Spongebob and Avatar, documentaries like Always at the Carlyle, Arranged, works by Ken Burns, learning options from The Great Courses and PBS, and exercise videos from Jillian Michaels. Movies include 2018’s RBG, and The Miseducation of Cameron Post, foreign films like The Elephant and the Butterfly and Monsoon Wedding, classics like Charade and Chinatown, plenty of horror movies, plus tons for the kids like The Velveteen Rabbit and 10-minute shorts from Mo Willems.
At this point, we hope you can imagine being curled up in your cozy spots, or getting a much needed respite from stressful transits, with these wonderful resource companions.
There are plenty of options indeed. For all ages.
Streamed or downloaded. Totally advertisement-free.
To go on trains, planes, and automobiles, on dreamy yachts and fishing boats, too! And the best part with these items is that you don’t have to worry about losing the copies. They automatically get checked back in, at the end of the loan period. Nothing more to worry about. You can relax and just enjoy their company.
With these thoughts and now that you know more about these great resources from our Library, we wish you happy travels!
— Janea Agbayani, Adult Services Library Specialist
For more information, visit www.livingstonlibrary.org/digital-collections/
For other topics, themes, and resources suggested for lifelong learning pursuits, visit our blog under the tag: Keep On Learning.