Working Americans: A Historical Collection

The library’s reference collection contains hundreds of titles of interesting, up to date information about all manner of subjects, but did you know you could find some of those books online? One of the best resources available is Working Americans.

Each volume of the Working Americans series by Grey House Publishing covers a different aspect of American life. Click the link to check out the following with descriptions from the publisher:

Working Americans Vol. 1: The Working Class, 2nd Edition

The updated Second Edition of this important reference work focuses on the lifestyles and economic life of working class families and looks, decade by decade, into the kind of work they did, the homes they lived in, the food and clothes they bought, the entertainment they sought as well as the society and history that shaped the world Americans worked in from 1880 to 2012. From the wealth of government surveys, social worker histories, economic data, family diaries and letters, newspaper and magazine features, this unique reference assembles a remarkably personal and realistic look at the lives of ordinary working Americans.

Downloading Music and Videos with the New Freegal

If you're a music lover and you haven't checked out Freegal, the library's downloadable music service, you should! With Freegal and your library card, you can download music and videos, and they're yours to keep. It's free and it's legal, and that's why it's called Freegal.

Now there's a new edition of Freegal, with many advantages over the old one. It has a more user-friendly interface, more music, new video capability, and you can see what's available before you login.

Freegal is based on a credit system. Library patrons get three credits per week. For one credit you can get a song, and for two you can get a video. If you have run out of credits for the week, you can simply add songs and videos to a wishlist, and download them with the credits you get the next week.

To get to Freegal, go to our webpage at www.mytpl.org.  Then go to Online Catalogs on the navigation bar, and click "E-Services" in the dropdown menu. On the next page, scroll down and click on the Freegal icon.

This brings you to the Freegal page, which looks like this:

From this page you can browse songs and videos, see what's new and what's popular, and browse by genre. Or you can use the search box at the top of the page to find particular songs, artists, albums, and videos.

Let's go through the process of downloading a song. First, login by clicking the "Login" button at the top right of the page. Now enter your library card number, as well as your PIN, which is a 6 digit number based on your birthdate.  For example, someone born on September 9, 1999 would have the PIN number 090999 (if you have trouble logging in, give the library a call at 876-5861 ex. 2 for help).

If you want the song "I Had Me A Girl", by The Civil Wars, you could enter the song title in the search box.
This will bring you to the page for the album the song appears on. Now you can click the play button to hear a sample of the song. If you click the button with a + sign next to the song, you can either download the song, or add it to a wishlist so you can download it later.

If you click "download", your computer will prompt you to save the song in a file on your computer. Bingo!  Now you own the song, and you can transfer it to a mobile device or burn it to a CD.  It's yours to enjoy.

Freegal also has Apple and Android apps for your mobile devices.  These are useful if you're out and about, however, we recommend using the Freegal website to download songs to your computer first.  This allows you to transfer them from your computer to your mobile device, so you have them in both places. If you use iTunes, you can download the song to your computer, and then transfer it into you iTunes library.

If you have an questions about using Freegal, please don't hesitate to email us at reference@mytpl.org, or call the Reference Department at 876-5861, ex. 2.  Happy listening!