Over 10,000 titles in eBook format are available through netLibrary. To register, come to Mead Library (or any other participating Wisconsin public library) or register online. Mead eBooks can be "checked out" from any Internet-equipped computer for 24 hours. You may view an alphabetized list of titles, or a list of titles by subject classification online.

To register you must have a library card and an email address. And be prepared to register with a unique user name and a password. Once registered you can access netLibrary via the internet from any personal computer at home, at school, or at work, or from a public access computer at Mead Library.

The commercially published books in the collection are current nonfiction and reference titles covering a wide range of topics from Chinese medicine to careers, from probate law to high blood pressure, from child rearing to investing. They include all of the Cliffs Notes guides to literary interpretation, over 300 "Complete Idiot's Guides to...," and scores of books on business and management, computers, and information technology.

The public domain eBooks derive from Project Gutenberg, the Internet's oldest producer of free electronic texts, and include such classics as the plays of Shakespeare, the novels of Jane Austen and Mark Twain, the short stories of O. Henry and Chekhov, the essays of John Stuart Mill, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Lord Byron.

The ability to search on every word in every eBook makes the netLibrary power search a very useful feature. You can search by author, title, subject, publisher, key word, full text, publication date and ISBN and your results can be displayed according to the number of occurrences of a search word or by author, title, publisher or publication year. Also, you have access 24 hours a day, every day of the year, from anywhere in the world.

Like any library book netLibrary eBooks are checked out for a limited period of time...in this case for 24 hours. Once your 24 hour loan period is up, your eBook is automatically checked in. If that's not enough time for you to do the required reading and research you can check the eBook out again, and again, and again. However, once an eBook is checked out it is unavailable to any other user...just like a regular library book.

Mead Public Library also offers the Gale Virtual Reference Library. These complete books, listed below, may be read online on your computer screen. Each book generally includes a table of contents, index, and list of illustrations.

Access the Gale Virtual Reference Library from a home, office, or school computer: (Please have your Mead Library card number and PIN available. Your PIN usually is the last four digits of your home phone number.)

History
American Decades Primary Sources 10v, 2004
Colonial America Reference Library 6v, 2000
Encyclopedia of Modern Asia 6v, 2002
Fashion, Costume, and Culture: Clothing, Headwear, Body Decorations, and Footwear through the Ages 5v, 2004
Industrial Revolution Reference Library 4v, 2003
U*X*L American Decades 11v, 2003
Vietnam War Reference Library 5v, 2001
War in the Persian Gulf Reference Library 4v, 2004
World War II Reference Library 5v, 2000

Law
Encyclopedia of the American Constitution 2nd ed., 6v, 2000

Nation and World
Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations 4th ed., 10v, 2004

Religion
Encyclopedia of Religion 2nd ed., 15v, 2005
New Catholic Encyclopedia 2nd ed., 15v, 2003

Science
Plant Sciences 4v, 2001

Digital audiobooks and e-books are available to Mead Library customers through Eastern Shores Library System and the Wisconsin Public Library Consortium. To download audiobooks, you must have the free software available from Overdrive. To see a list of audiobooks available for download by Mead Library customers, go to the Mead catalog, and do a general keyword search using the term "overdrive." Or, go to the WPLC digital book website and click on "View all audio Books" and "View all video" to see the titles.

Overdrive is the leading digital book vendor for libraries. Using its software, you may download e-books and audio books which may then be transferred to a portable listening device or (in some cases) burned onto a CD.

OverDrive has announced the release of the first in a series of free digital book applications for mobile devices. OverDrive® Media Console(TM) for Windows Mobile® (http://overdrive.com/software/omc) enables users with Windows Mobile phones to wirelessly download audiobooks, music, and video to their devices and play the titles with the same superior navigation features of OverDrive's desktop software. To view a list of supported devices including Sprint Palm Treo(TM), AT&T Samsung Jack(TM), and Verizon HTC Touch Pro(TM), visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/devices/default.mspx.

With OverDrive Media Console for Windows Mobile, audiobook readers can now instantly download over the air from thousands of libraries and retailers in OverDrive's global network.

Suggestions for transferring an MP3-CD (available for checkout at Mead) to an iPod through iTunes or to Windows Media Player.

The works of Central Wisconsin historian Malcolm Rosholt have been digitized by the McMillan Library in Wisconsin Rapids. The eleven books cover such topics as logging, railroads and the early pioneers of Central Wisconsin. All of the titles are well illustrated and four of them are photographic albums. The works remain protected under their original copyright, but his family granted permission for these books to be digitized and displayed on McMillan's website.