LEWISTON — With the growing demand for e-books and online services, it was just a matter of time before the Twin Cities libraries’ Internet presence went out on its own.
The Lewiston and Auburn public libraries debuted a new website at the beginning of September, www.LibraryLA.org. It combines the most popular Internet services available at the two libraries in one place.
“When you go to either website, they try to highlight too much,” Jake Paris, adult services librarian at the Lewiston library, said. “It shows how to renew books, services online, what events we are having and where to park. It’s too much.”
The new site just focuses on interactive services you can use from home.
“We decided to make a site that promotes the services we can offer from home,” Paris said. “You can set up an account, renew your card, download music or find out about your great-great-grandfather.”
The new website directs Lewiston-Auburn library users to a host of electronic services — the state library systems e-book and audiobook download library at MaineInfoNet.org, the Maine Virtual Resource Library’s electronic document list, genealogical information on Heritage Quest online and Tumblebooks animated e-book library for children.
All the services linked from LibraryLA.org are free to people with a Twin Cities library card and easily accessible from any computer. Most require a library card number to proceed.
“We don’t focus on the individual sites as much as what they do,” Paris said. “It sounds better to people to say we offer genealogical services instead of Heritage Quest.”
One service is Freegalmusic.com, a free and legal music downloading site. Residents can download three free songs per week. The songs come in the MP3 format and are free of digital restrictions.
“It’s similar an e-book or audiobook service, with the difference that you get to keep the song forever,” Paris said. “There is no expiration date.”
There are limits. The two libraries can only allow 40 songs to be downloaded per week. Once those songs have been downloaded, Lewiston-Auburn users have to wait a week to download more.
“We pay for the songs,” he said. “It’s much the same as Amazon, except we pay $1 per song. Every time someone downloads, we pay for it.”
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