by Amanda Molumby

Now that summer is here, maybe you have a little more time to read some books or magazines, watch a movie, or browse online. Or perhaps you have even less time than usual and are looking for ways to wind down in the spare time you do have. While I highly recommend visiting the library—we have some pretty amazing programs happening during summer, and it’s a nice, cool spot to get out of the summer heat—if you find yourself unable to swing into the library itself, try looking for some excellent online resources on the Ames Public Library website!

You can use our online databases to read news articles and keep current with local and global events. If you happen to have a house full of children during summer break, try out BookFlix, which offers a wonderful variety of books on different topics, pairing one fiction and one nonfiction title on specific subjects. Job hunting? Use Cypress Resume to help build your resume. If you’re more into investing in stocks, try out Weiss Financial to find valuable tips and information on all things financial-literacy. Want to learn another language? Mango Languages is a great tool to help you on your journey.

If you’re traveling and can’t pack all the books you want to read, download the Libby app through Bridges, which grants access to a tremendous selection of e-books, e-audiobooks and e-magazines. If you enjoy a good graphic novel, comic, or manga, check out Comics Plus, which allows access to thousands of digital comics, graphic novels and manga from over a hundred publishers.

To access these resources, go to our website, amespubliclibrary.org, and find the “Learn & Explore” drop-down menu to select on “Online Learning”. (If you’re on a mobile device, click on the three horizontal white lines in the green banner to open the menus.) From there, you can limit your search by subject or scroll down to explore all the online resources we have available.

The majority or our online resources are available from anywhere, although a few are for in-library use only. Some of our “Stream & Download” resources are available only to residents of our service area (Ames and rural Story County). Visit www.amespubliclibrary.org/books-movies-more/stream-download for details

Here’s hoping that in between all the summer activities that you can spend some time digging into our digital library!