Resource Share — Did you know you have access to 100+ magazines?!

In a bit of a digression from school library news, this is a general celebration of our public library system and a specific resource-share from Brooklyn Public Library.

I’m currently obsessed with Brooklyn Public Library’s relatively recent digital offering of over 100 magazines via Flipster.

Flipster at BPL : http://www.bklynlibrary.org/flipster

When I first read about this, I suspected it would be a long list of not-very-interesting, pretty-much-free-anyway magazines.

But then I looked into it… how wrong I was.

Horn Book! — School Library Journal!  The New Yorker! (cartoons included!)  Mother Jones and National Review!  The Atlantic!  Vogue!  People!  Time!  Real Simple… Rolling Stone... O Magazine… Consumer Reports… !

As well as children’s magazines like: Ask, Cricket, Cobblestone, Ladybug, Sports Illustrated Kids!

And so many more…

All of the most recent issues and a selection of past issues are available.

Once logged in with your BPL account, you can view a magazine in your browser or you can view on your device via the Flipster app for Android, iPhone or iPad.

Making this even more unbelievable, when using the Flipster app, your downloaded magazines can be read offline...on the subway, in the park, wherever!

Whether on a desktop/laptop or a smaller screen with the app, the Flipster interface is beautiful — easy to navigate, zoom, isolate an article, flip pages, and return to table of contents.

While exploring this tremendous resource, take a moment to appreciate the public library system we have here in New York.  

[Anyone who lives, works, attends school or owns property in New York State is entitled to library cards from New York Public, Brooklyn Public, and Queens Library!  That’s wild.]  

Back to school libraries.... 

Do you promote the public library in your school?

In addition to increasing access to titles and information, using the public libraries binds our students as citizens to the world beyond our schools — it’s an object lesson in how we benefit individually when we, as a group, invest in public resources.

How can we make our students and families more aware of the resources lying in wait for them — e-books, audiobooks, magazines, Bookflix, Tumblebooks — so perfect for home-use, subway-use, waiting-in-the-doctor’s-office-use, etc.?