Library resource spotlight: Libby

To celebrate International Literacy Day, let’s introduce Libby!

Libby, which can be accessed via the Libby website or as an app on your iOS or Android device, is a free app where you can enjoy ebooks, digital audiobooks and magazines from your library. You can also stream titles with Wi-Fi or mobile data or download them for offline use and read anytime anywhere.

International Literacy Day, celebrated each year on 8th September, first commenced in 1967 with the aim to highlight the importance of literacy to individuals, communities and societies, and to create a more literate, peaceful and sustainable society.

In 2024, at least 739 million young people and adults worldwide still lacked basic literacy skills, and the theme of this year’s Literacy Day was ‘promoting literacy in the digital era’, as digitalisation has changed the ways in which we learn, live, work and socialise, such as raising concerns regarding privacy issues and reinforced biases, as well as creating double marginalisation, which is the exclusion not only from traditional literacy learning but also from the benefits of the digital age.

There’s more than 10,000 titles available in our Libby catalogue on 116 different subjects, including short stories, historical fiction, classic literature, and fantasy, and you can also filter search results by format, audience and language too.

Some of the newest additions to Libby include The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, which is now a major Netflix original series, My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan, which is now a Netflix film, the complete series of The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han, which is show on Amazon Prime, and My Life with the Walter Boys by Ali Novak, which is also now a Netflix series.

For access, using the Libby app, follow the prompts to add a new library and search for ‘Keele University’, and sign in with your Keele email address and password. Libby is also available on the library’s A-Z of online resources and there’s a handy help page too!