Can’t sleep? Want to borrow a book in the middle of the night? Download Libby, attach your public library card number, and you have access to all the reading material your library has on offer. Of course it’s also perfect for downloading items during daylight. Libby is easy to navigate, and comes with simple tutorials if something isn’t clear, but really it’s quite straightforward. Browse or search for a title, and click on download. There are several ways to search, plenty of inspiration, and you can place a hold on an item if it’s not currently available and it will be immediately downloaded for you when it becomes so. Return your item with a single click and repeat the process as often as you like. The reading experience is excellent, with a choice of font styles and sizes and background colours to optimise your reading comfort. You can easily see how far you are along in a chapter, with estimated reading times. Highlight passages, keep notes, lookup word definitions on the fly. Audiobook speed can be adjusted up to 2x normal speed should you prefer chipmunk to human voice. Can’t recommend public libraries and this app enough. Also check out Kanopy for movies, and Press Reader for magazines and periodicals, which can also be accessed from your library card.

Libby is fairly user friendly for readers who have a high turnover of books but find it difficult to get to a physical library in their limited opening hours. A lockdown friend! Positive aspects are that it contains a good range of books and you can adjust the length of your loan. If you are not ready to borrow a book you have on hold, you can postpone borrowing it until you are ready but still somehow stay at the front of the queue. I like that I can tag books that I don’t have time to read now but I want to remember when I’m looking for something later. I have an ongoing list I can refer to when choosing a new read.Negative aspects is that they have some glaring holes in the collection (no Robert Galbraith? What is that about?). If you want to make changes to Libby's settings, it isn’t intuitive, you have to be very motivated to keep looking. Biggest negative: Libby is not available on kindle in Australia. Inside the app, it says it is but when you dig deeper, it turns out that is only in America.I will keep using Libby as it seems the best available option but it can still do with some work.

Fairly easy to use once you can get it set up… but… has definite bugs… eg if you have a book on hold and reach the top of the queue but have meanwhile started another… you have the option to let the next person have it rather than borrow immediately. this option though does not keep you at the top of the queue as it indicates… nooooo you go back down the queue… so you can end up back at number 3 or 10 for being polite and not sitting on a book you cannot read… this means the best for YOU is to borrow and NOT read it as that means you have it rather than waiting weeks for it to appear again… Also a much more limited booklist than the library actually holds… and they keep pushing the audiobook option… and I really do not want to listen to a book as I like to read…. Screen reader is poorer to read than Kindle by quite a bit… maps are impossible to get to full screen as they like to make them one side of a “book” page… and will not allow screen expansion with fingers… quality of images is terrible so not readable in small sizes.