Ebsco

ADIEU, ADE. HELLO, THORIUM!

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Do you remember your Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) username and password? Neither do I! It makes it frustrating to read the EBSCO eBook I downloaded! Is this familiar? Well, good news.  

Due to the upcoming ADA II compliance deadline, EBSCO eBooks is sunsetting its Adobe Digital Editions requirement. The product will not be in compliance, and EBSCO has moved on! Welcome to the modern era: Thorium Reader!  

A blue app tile with the letters "Th" in white text, and the word "Thorium app" underneath.

Thorium is a modern alternative to ADE, specifically designed for offline eBook reading. Unlike ADE, patrons will no longer have to create a separate username and password (note: they will still be required to use their EBSCO username and password). 

Thorium’s benefits include a range of text-to-speech functions, the ability to choose font type, text size, and spacing, as well as change the overall layout of the eBook. It is also designed to work with a variety of screen readers, making it accessible to more types of readers than ADE could ever dream of.  

This will only affect offline reading, when a patron checks out and downloads an EBSCO eBook from our collection. Right now, Thorium is only available via desktop and iOS apps, though the Android version is coming down the pike. 

Again, the online reading experience won’t change. When a patron wants to download an eBook for offline use, they will need to download Thorium instead of ADE. Below, you can see what it will look like in the EBSCO experience. Note at the bottom, patrons are provided with a passcode that they will be prompted to enter once they open Thorium.  

They will only need to enter the passcode once per device to open the downloaded eBook. Additionally, they can use the same passcode across six devices simultaneously. If, as happens, they forget the passcode, it is easy to generate a new one. 

Thorium is available as an app on our Microsoft desktop and laptop computers. You can download it now to take a look!

ADE will no longer work with EBSCO eBooks beginning on April 14. You can find out more by visiting EBSCO’s Thorium FAQs here. Onward, into our glorious eBook future! 

-Mary, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh 

Continue ReadingADIEU, ADE. HELLO, THORIUM!

Build Diverse Booklists with Novelist

Happy Black History Month, everyone! 

If you haven’t noticed yet, Novelist has a new look that is: just like all the other Ebsco products! If you want a broad overview about the new Novelist experience, you can click here to learn more about it from Ebsco itself. 

But I’ve already blogged about that. What I’m here to blog at you about today is how the tools in the new Novelist experience can support you when building diverse booklists to use in Bibliocommons, printed booklists, display inspiration, and more.  

Novelist’s advanced search has lots to offer, but I am going to focus on the author facets. You have to scroll down a bit to find them, but here you can see options for the author’s gender identity, cultural identity, and nationality.  Lots to choose from!

For instance, let’s say you want to make a Black History Month fiction display in your Teen space, you can select “Black” as the author’s cultural identity. 

Then you can select “Teen” as the Audience, and “Fiction” to return a list of novels. 

Using just those three facets, you’ll get a list of more than 1700 titles! That’s a lot! Maybe too much! So, to go a step further, you can also use keyword searches. Here, I’ve used “secret societies” because secret societies are cool. You can see the results have narrowed down to a manageable list of 55 results.  

From there, you can use the “Check the Library Catalog” button to be whisked away into our collections in Bibliocommons, find read-alikes, save items to lists in your Ebsco account, and all the other good stuff Novelist can do with its results lists. 

Our collections are built to reflect the vibrant, diverse communities we support. Take a cruise through Novelist’s author facets to find out how they can help this vital work. 

-Mary, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh 

Continue ReadingBuild Diverse Booklists with Novelist