Commentary: Ring in the new year with your Whitman County Library card

A new year always brings new opportunities, goals, and ways to enrich one’s life. Here at Whitman County Library, we think there’s no better way to ring in the new year than with your library card.

Library card holders have access to more than 108,000 books and audiobooks, DVDs, music CDs, activity kits, and downloadable audio and ebooks. Also, the library district provides access to more than 20 online databases that cover topics from genealogy, free periodicals, online learning skills, Consumer Reports, Mango Languages, world travel to movie streaming.

Whether your resolution is to read more, stay healthy or learn something new, the library wants to help you along the way.

Learn something new

Is learning a new language on your new year’s resolution list? Mango Languages gives you 24/7 access to more than 70 world languages, plus more than 20 English courses and can be accessed through your laptop, tablet, smart-phone or computer for free with your library card. Courses are self-paced covering grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and real world situations using native speaker audio.

LinkedIn Learning is an online educational site that includes more than 3,000 courses (and more than 130,000 videos) in popular fields like web design and development, IT, education/instruction, photography, media production and business. Whitman County residents can access LinkedIn Learning content free with their library card.

Stay healthy and explore

Whitman County Library offers Discover Passes for checkout. Each pass comes with an activity backpack that contains binoculars, field guides, various interpretive materials and maps of local county trails and roads. This was made possible by a program called Check out Washington — collaboration between the Washington State Parks and Washington State Library that allows individuals to check out a state park without paying the parking fee.

Outdoor activity backpacks are also available for checkout from the library as part of the Bonnie Belle collection. The three outdoor themed backpacks ranging from bird watching, fishing to hiking, were developed as a way of encouraging participation in outdoor activities.

Additionally, the library offers two geocaching backpacks. Each backpack contains a Garmin GPS unit, information about geocaching, and guidebooks from the Ice Age Floods Institute featuring local landmarks.

Family history

The library provides free access to HeritageQuest for your genealogy research. HeritageQuest offers a complete indexed listing of U.S. Federal Census images from 1790 to 1940, and information on people and places described in more than 28,000 family and local histories.

Whitman Heritage Digital Collections, available through the library’s website, allows residents to research local history. This is a project of the library and local partners, consisting of photographs, documents, and artifacts documenting early culture and community life of Whitman County and communities throughout Eastern Washington’s Palouse Region.

Stream movies

Residents with a Whitman County Library card can stream more than 30,000 movies, documentaries, foreign films and TV series with Kanopy. Films can be streamed from any computer, television, mobile device or platform by downloading the Kanopy app.

Read more

Washington Anytime Library offers more than 59,000 titles available as downloadable ebooks and audiobooks. Using the Libby app, residents can place holds, checkout and read or listen to books from their computer, smartphone or tablet using their library card. If a title is not available, give us a call to make a request.

Residents can also place holds on physical library materials through our online card catalog. Additionally, view new items that have been added to our library including items on order. As always, requests can be picked up at any of our 14 branch locations.

Many of our library resources are available online and can be accessed from home 24/7. If you need help with any of these resources, contact your friendly neighborhood librarian. However you celebrate the new year, we hope it’s a good one, and we hope to see you in the library in 2022.

Flores is the public services manager at Whitman County Library.