Melissa Freeman, Nederland. I think the first digital book that I “turned the pages of” was Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls. I only chose it because Amazon offers out-of-copyright books for free, and I occasionally like to read pretentious-sounding books to boost my literature-nerd points and to effectively make obscure jokes.

Amazon has this fantastic Kindle App that allows you to read Kindle books on your cell phone, tablet, laptop or computer—even if you don’t own a proper Kindle. I found that I enjoyed e-books on my phone for a multitude of reasons, not limited to seamless dictionary use while reading, the ability to highlight and bookmark passages, search functions, reading “guilty-pleasure novels” without anyone being the wiser, and most importantly—always having the same book on me because I almost always have my phone nearby.

I subsisted on free classics for a while before I began purchasing modern e-books to read on my smartphone during lunch breaks.A fully-fledged e-reading addiction, and a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of books later, I saw the error of my ways.

It wasn’t a loss in the physical aesthetics of reading a print book or not being able to pass along a particularly good book to a friend. My mistake was that I should have been looking to the library for e-books all along.

The library offers thousands of digital books that a person can check out for free, day or night, any time of the year and even from Antarctica, so long as there is a WiFi signal. While I lived in a different city at the time when I learned about libraries lending e-books, the same is true of Nederland Community Library.

Our library has three platforms (Overdrive, 3M, and Tumblebooks) for checking out the perfect e-book from a selection of over 10,000 titles. And the selection is not limited to classics. It’s possible to check out a brand new bestseller, a Harry Potter audiobook, a book for your child, and even a vegan cookbook.

When I first began e-reading, I could not imagine wanting to use a digital cookbook.  Never one to knock something without trying it, I borrowed an e-cookbook anyway. What I gained was the convenience of being able to plan out meals and grocery lists on the go, and that turned out to be invaluable to my busy schedule.

Now that I have several years of e-reading under my belt, I’ve fallen into a functional blend of e-book and print book usage according to whichever medium I feel is more suitable to the genre.

Take a minute today to visit the Nederland Library website (nedlib.org) and click on the icons for Overdrive and 3M to become familiar with the services. With your library card in hand, you can place holds on popular titles or get started e-reading straight away.

If you need any assistance, I am happy to help you learn to navigate the ins and outs of e-readers during Tech Tuesdays from 2 to 3 p.m. each week. In addition, Nederland Community Library has pre-loaded Nook e-readers for you to check out to see if e-reading is something that you would like to adopt. Happy reading!

(Melissa Freeman is the Technology Resources Assistant for the Nederland Community Library and is currently streamlining the NCL website at www.nedlib.org)