Here's the status of my quest to get access to the
Northern California Digital Library.
First, the selection of ebooks isn't as good as I initially thought, because
many of the ones I saw were audio books.
Second, you have to have a library card from one of the libraries subscribing to the digital library. While true that anyone in California can get a library card, you must physically show up at the library in order to get it.
I'm looking into ways to solve that. I'd prefer to read on a ebook reader, but I can't see paying $9 for a book.
Ahhh, "OVERDRIVE" (from your link)!
I was also amazed at how difficult it was to figure out how to get an ebook from our library onto the Nook that DW checked out from our library. It came pre-loaded with some ebooks, but I wanted to see how you actually get ebooks that you want to check out from our local library onto the Nook.
First, I figured that since the Nook has Wi-Fi access, that I could just get ebooks using the Nook. Apparently not (but maybe I missed something). But there was a bunch of references to installing this 'Overdrive' program on your computer. But after jumping through those hoops, that was only for
audio-books (again, maybe I missed something).
At this point, I was getting frustrated and did some googling, and actually found some reasonable instructions from some Library in Iowa(!).
It seems you need to install
Adobe Digital Editions. Then you have to go through a registration process (another logon/PW to store!), and (IIRC) authorize that specific Nook with this account. I then thought I DLd an ebook from our library (which you the open from Adobe DE), but Adobe DE would not recognize what I DLd. Then I noticed the 1.5MB eBook file was only 4K (!?). Turns out that is only a 'key', and I had to right click and tell it to open using Adobe DE (why DE would not open it directly is a mystery to me). Well,
then it DLd the actual ebook file.
I could read it in Adobe DE, but now, how to get it on the Nook? Said I should just plug in the Nook and it would be recognized by Adobe DE. Nope, tried a bunch of things. Finally saw that I had to QUIT Adobe DE, and then it saw the Nook after restarting the app. Dragged the eBooks onto the Nook icon, and it got them. Whew!
This should be fairly straightforward next time, but I expect DW will have some troubles. I can't believe my local library doesn't have some hand-holding type instructions, I will need to contact them about that. And I imagine less computer iterate types would have given up along the way.
So I guess my question still stands - can you DL an eBook from the library directly to the Nook w/o going through the computer? If not, what's the Wifi for? I suppose it's possible that some of this stuff is disabled for these Library Loaner Nooks?
-ERD50