By Paul Birchall
For some reason, over the past week or so, I’ve been stopped a bunch of times on the street or at Vons or at Scoops just getting my four shot non-fat iced latte, by folks asking me about something library-related. The conversation always ends with the person saying “I had no idea that you could do (whatever they are asking about) at Avalon Library!”
It occurred to me that the folks of our town may know Avalon Library as a great place to pick out a book, hang out, go to storytime, or do an art project on Tuesdays or Thursdays.
However, as part of LA County Library, we offer a whole lot of other services, which it sometimes seems do not get their full due.
So I would like to take a few paragraphs to let you in on some of the terrific add ons that are available with your fabulous card to Avalon Library.
There’s been a TikTok video going around promoting the fact that LA County Library offers free passes to all California State Parks. As an LA County Library, Avalon Library has these passes for you, too! They are available for check out for three weeks on your library card and can be used all over California.
I have to note that they are good only for State Parks, not National Parks, but I have noticed that almost all National Parks have a State Park adjacent to them. For instance, the Library Pass doesn’t work for Yosemite, but it does work for the Bodie State Park that is right next to it—and Bodie is a ghost town from the 1850s! The pass can also be used at great State Parks like Calaveras Big Trees State Park, Bolsa Chica State Park, and Point Magu State Park.
Did you also know that you can use your library card to print out free tickets to a number of the museums in the LA area?
With the library’s Discover and Go feature, which you can locate at the library’s webpage, https://lacountylibrary.org, not only can you get a free ticket to visit our own Catalina Museum for Art and History, but you can go to other museums, such as the LA Brea Tarpits, the Claremont Museum of Natural History, and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Museum. Reservations are subject to availability, and there may be black out dates, but it’s a terrific chance to enjoy some culture.
You may also not know that your library card gets you access to a free three day subscription to the online edition of the New York Times, whose articles are more usually hidden behind pricey firewalls.
Log onto the paper via the LA County Website, scroll to digital library, then to magazine and newspapers. Sign in with your library card to the New York Times and enjoy reading about all the chaos and troubles you moved to Avalon to escape from!
And how about this: Would it surprise you to know you can use your library card to graduate from high school? Well, something like that, anyway. The library subscribes to a service called Career Online High School, and you can use your library card to register for an online program to get your High School degree for once and for all.
Visit the website at lacountlibrary.org/diploma and click on the assessment test to see if you qualify for the program (I’m sure you do)!
Meanwhile, if you’re 18 and up, you can now check out a mifi-equipped chrome book for three weeks at a time! There’s a brief contract for you to sign, but the mifi and chromebooks are then yours to use for whatever purpose you like and can be renewed a couple of times before being returned (holds list permitting).
What else? With your library card, you can access Brainfuse, a website that will proof and assist you with papers for school or resumes for the next stage of your career.
The Brainfuse site can be accessed through the main library website and then by clicking “digital library.”
And while you’re in the Digital Library area, discover the 500,000 ebooks available to check out and read on your computer, tablet, or IPad. Can you imagine?
Avalon Library’s actual physical holdings may be not massive—but you have access to the enormous collection of every book in the LA County Library’s ebook collection.
And while we have your attention, did you know that in addition to all the programs and events that take place in the building at Avalon Library (check out our monthly printed calendar for more information on these), LA County Library provides a whole panoply of virtual programs which you can watch conveniently online.
This month, the County Library is offering lectures on how to start your own business (online at the library’s website on Wednesday June 21 at 3 pm), an author talk with Tananarive Due (online at the library’s website on Wednesday June 28) and a talk on exploring videoteleconferencing softwares (online at the library’s website on June 29).
Check the library’s website for more details on these and many more virtual programs.
Believe it or not, I could go on and on, because that isn’t even just the first 20 of the unexpected things you can do with your library card.
But perhaps I will write more about this next time.
If you want to hear about some of the other things I’ve had to skip over, come stop on by Avalon Library for a bit of a chat.
