Tech Tips from Mr G Borrowing ebooks Using the 3M Cloud app on Android Devices

Transcription

1 Tech Tips from Mr G Borrowing ebooks Using the 3M Cloud app on Android Devices Here at the Liverpool Public Library, we provide two ways of borrowing ebooks. The first, and most popular way, is to use the OverDrive system. However, because of the continuing state of flux of the publishing industry, and the fact that some publishers aren t available through OverDrive, we also started making the 3M Cloud system available back in This handout is for people who have devices running the Android Operating System. This includes devices like any of the Nook tablets, the Nexus 7, and the Samsung Galaxy. By the way, all the screenshots for this handout were done on Google Nexus 7, so your results may look a little different on whatever device you re using. Kindles Need Not Apply Unfortunately, as of this writing, although they re also Android devices, there is no official support for the 3M Cloud app on any of the Kindle Fire models. There are a few workarounds, for that, but they re dealt with in a different handout. Getting the Software You can get the 3M Cloud app by going to ether the Play Store or the Nook Storefront. It s a free download. Hey, You, Get Off of My Cloud Liverpool isn t the only library in the county that has the 3M Cloud system. Fayetteville and the County system (OCPL) also have it. However, because of the way that the publishing industry is at the moment, Liverpool and Fayetteville have found the 3M contract to be more favorable if we get our collections separately. This means that we can t take out ebooks from each other s systems. Liverpool cardholders can only take out books from the Liverpool Cloud, Fayetteville members can only take out books from the Fayetteville Cloud, and everyone else can take out books from the general OCPL Cloud, but not from either Liverpool or Fayetteville. Perhaps this will change one day, when ebooks are more common; but this is the way it is for now. Now that you understand that, let s talk about selecting your library. Selecting Your Library When you open the 3M app for the first time, it walks you through the process of connecting to your library. You ll start off by selecting your country followed by your state, and then your library system. After that it will show you a space to enter your library card number and PIN. Next click on the button that says that you agree to the End User License Agreement (you may even want to read it), and then tap on the Login button. Don t try to be slick, and try to use your Liverpool card for joining the Fayetteville or OCPL clouds. It won t work. You ll get a very polite message telling you that you need one of their library cards in order to use their cloud. Tech Tips from Mr G The 3M Cloud app for Android Devices Page 1 of 5

2 Finding Books Once you re in, there are three ways to look for a book. The first way is by shelf view, the second is by category view, and the third is by going into search view. You can tell which one you re in by looking at the little bar at the top of the screen and seeing which of the first three icons has been selected and highlighted. Four icons went to a bar Shelf view represents all the displays you might see when you actually walk into the library building. This includes a shelf for Liverpool School District Summer Reading Lists. You can scroll back and forth through each shelf or you can scroll down to see more shelves than the three and a half that appear on your screen at the moment. In category view, you get to see a list of all the categories that we have 3M books in. It s like searching by subject. Using search view is a little tricky, because the screen can be very misleading. In fact, it confused me the first few times. When I saw the screen shown on the right, I was absolutely certain that it was telling me that the only way I could search for books was to go to the full library catalog which has thousands upon thousands of items that aren t part of anyone s cloud. It was only after about 15 or 20 minutes of going back and forth with this, and asking one of my colleagues about this, that I noticed the search bar at the top of the screen. Aha! This is where you type in the author or title that you re looking for, to finally get some results. By the way, if you decide to use search view, make sure that you go to the Refine Search Result button near the top of the screen (it s circled on the right) to see what options have been checked. If you do a search on a book that you know we have, but are getting no results, it could be because you limited yourself to only seeing books available to check out. Once you ve made this selection, go back to the main search screen by tapping on the return button (shown on the right). Tech Tips from Mr G The 3M Cloud app for Android Devices Page 2 of 5

3 Take Me Out In the example on the right, I decided to look for humor books. Out of the five choices shown, three say Ready for Check Out and two say Ready for Put on Hold. That means that three of them are available to be checked out right now. The others are currently out to someone else, but you can put a hold on them for when they come back. I Feel Bad About My Neck sounds pretty good to me, so I ll tap on the button for that. I ll get Book Details screen like the one below, and just below the picture of the book is a green Check Out button. Tap on it. When I do, it will appear in My Books, like in the example below. It will also probably open the book right up for you to start reading. If it doesn t, then just tap on the book. You should also notice that right under the picture of the book, it shows you how many days you have left with the book. Tech Tips from Mr G The 3M Cloud app for Android Devices Page 3 of 5

4 Reading Your Book Now that you have your book, there are a few things you should know about reading it. The first is that there are controls that show up at the top and bottom of the screen if you tap on it. You can make these controls go away by tapping on the screen again. (2) (3)(4)(5) (6) 1. The control at the bottom is used for moving very quickly forward and backward though the book, in order to get to a certain point. 2. The set of books in the upper left-hand corner closes the book and takes you back to the My Books screen. 3. The italicized i in the upper middle takes you to a Book Details screen. This shows you information about the book, lets you give it a rating, takes you to the table of contents, takes you to any bookmarks you ve created, and also lets you check in the book. 4. The gear is what most people are initially concerned about. This is where you change the font size, the margin size, the brightness, turn night mode on and off, and can lock or unlock the orientation. 5. The magnifying glass is used to search for a word or passage in the book (it definitely beats skimming through the whole thing to find out where Scrooge said If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population ). 6. There s a little dashed square with a plus sign in it in the upper right-hand corner so faint that it doesn t even show up here. This is where you create the bookmarks that I mentioned earlier. Oh and of course, to move forward and backward through the book in a normal way, you simply swipe to the left or right, as if you were flipping a regular page. (1) Returning Your Book One of the great things about ebooks is that they never become overdue. On the other hand, if you re a fast reader, you might want to return the book early so that someone else can have it. There are a number of ways to do this, and I ll show you one right here. Remember what I told you earlier about the i button on the top control bar? Tap on that for the Book Details screen, and then scroll to the bottom until you see the button that says Check In. Tap on that, and you ll get another screen that asks you if you really want to check in the book (we all make mistakes sometimes). If this is indeed what you want to do, then tap on Return Book, at the bottom of the page, and the book will be returned. Tech Tips from Mr G The 3M Cloud app for Android Devices Page 4 of 5

5 When You Wish Upon a Cloud One very interesting feature of the 3M Cloud system is the ability to suggest that we order a particular book. If the item you re looking for brings up a screen of Sorry, no books were found, go back to the Advanced Search button, and select Include books not in library, and if the book is available through 3M, it will show up in a new list. Tapping on Add to Wish List sends a message to the people who order books for us, suggesting that we add this one to our collection. We really do look at this information. Anything Else? There are so many different facets to using the 3M Cloud app for reading borrowed library books; definitely many more than I could possibly go over in the short pages. That s not a problem, because 3M has an online help system to cover all of this. There s no direct way of getting there from the app (maybe they ll fix that in a future version), but if you go to ebook.3m.com in your browser, you ll be at their main page, that has plenty of information. And of course, if you can t find out what you need to know there, feel free to make an appointment to see one of us. We ll be only too happy to help you out. Tech Tips from Mr G is a publication of the Liverpool Public Library. You can find more of them at This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. Tech Tips from Mr G The 3M Cloud app for Android Devices Page 5 of 5