Residents of Hunterdon County no longer have to sacrifice the comfort of their bedrooms to enter a room carrying books that number in the thousands.

The Hunterdon County Library has digitized the concept of a physical reading room through the creation of specialized eReading Rooms, through which library card holders can browse and borrow over 5,000 Romance, Kids, Mystery or Teen ebooks or audiobooks from any major computer, tablet or mobile device.

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Libby Explore page

Within the eReading rooms, each of these genres are broken down into a sub-genre to better direct readers to the source material for which they are searching.

For example, the Romance eReading Room includes titles categorized under New Romance, Highlander Romance and Paranormal Romance.

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Paranormal Romance titles

All Hunterdon County residents with library cards can access these rooms from their own technological devices.

They can also access them via desktops available at any one of the three county libraries located in Clinton, Ringoes and Flemington or its seven affiliate libraries located in Bunnvale, Frenchtown, High Bridge, Holland, Readington, Tewksbury and Three Bridges.

The eReading Rooms are accessed through Libby, the one-tap reading application developed from OverDrive.

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Libby landing page

According to Cortney Frank, emerging technologies librarian for the Adult Service Department at the county library headquarters in Flemington, eReading Rooms add more of a personal touch to the digital borrowing experience.

(It) mimics a physical space for you to be able to walk through and browse," Frank said. The digital checkouts are the same as the physical checkouts would be. (The eReading Rooms) treat the books like a physical item thats in your possession.

This personal touch is dually apparent in the weeks that Frank, who began working as a librarian for the county headquarters location in September, committed to creating the eReading Rooms.

Prior to launching the eReading Rooms in mid-October, Frank ran reports compiling lists of available ebooks and audiobooks and altered their organization to manually categorize them into the appropriate genres and sub-genres.

I took a look at what we have and tried to figure out a way to divvy it up and to service it to our patrons in a way that made sense and thats easy to digest," Frank said. It takes a little bit of extra legwork to place things in their categories, but I feel that its effective on the user-end, because you could just see everything that appeals to you, and browse, and find what youre looking for.

Frank added that she would also make adjustments if the reports seemed incomplete, or if they lacked various notable titles.

If I take a look at that list and I say, 'I think were missing some heavy hitters here, I can go back and manually add things (to the eReading Room)," Frank said.

The creation of the eReading Rooms mirrors the increasing number of Hunterdon County residents taking advantage of the libraries resources. The number of yearly checkouts from the county libraries and their affiliates has increased from 24,678 in 2014 to 76,671 in 2019, and, in the same timeframe, users borrowing books digitally from 4,539 to 18,596.

These numbers illustrate Franks description of digital lending as a growing trend that continues to gather momentum.

The day I rolled out the eReading Rooms, people were borrowing from it, Frank said. And as were promoting it more and spending a little bit more time on it, people are noticing, and theyre checking out more stuff. So its really gratifying to me to see how instant the response is."

Assistant Director for the Hunterdon County Library headquarters location Jennifer Winberry partially credited the success of the eReading Rooms to county residents increasing reluctance to physically check out books.

The big piece is you have to return (the book). You have to bring it back here, Winberry said.

Echoing Winberry, Frank described the digital borrowing experience as frictionless.

You can do it from home, you can do it without talking to anyone, and then, at the end of the lending period, this item just disappears from your device. We pull it back," Frank said.

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Libby notifications page

According to Frank, the universal accessibility of eReading Rooms is especially enticing to homebound individuals.

Ive talked on the phone with people who physically arent able to come in anymore, but who are still avid readers," Winberry said. So I always ask, What is it that you like reading? Do I have your authors? Do I have what youre interested in? And if I dont, then I try to place orders that will satisfy their needs, and Ill go over the steps with them.

Winberry added that the eReading Rooms have the additional benefit of being available to users 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

(The eReading Rooms) are always open," Winberry said. "When we close early for snow, or on a day were not open, or midnight when youre up with the baby, theyre available.

While expressing an interest in increasing the number of books available in the eReading Rooms, Frank emphasized that their expansion is strictly dependent on whether or not there is an increasing demand for it from readers.

Demand is illustrated by the librarys holds list, or a list monitoring physical books, ebooks, and audiobooks requested by county residents that are either not available or accessible through the library or are currently checked out by other individuals.

So as (the eReading Rooms) gain popularity and we see more holds numbers that are really through the roof, then well have to figure out how to accommodate that in our budget and how to add more titles to the service, Frank explained.

Frank urged Hunterdon County residents interested in improving library resources including and beyond the eReading Rooms to complete the librarys online survey.

(The survey) is a big deal. I want to know, Am I picking titles that youre interested in? Is there something more that I could do to meet your needs? Frank said. I really can only cater to people who tell me what they want.

Despite her eagerness to better serve the public, Frank expressed her belief that the addition of digital content resources like eReading Rooms demonstrate a big piece of that.

Theres no late fees, theres no risk. So it really is just easy. The whole thing is intended to just be completely seamless and simple, Frank said.

Caroline Fassett can be reached at cfassett@njadvancemedia.com.

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Hunterdon County Library welcomes digital borrowers to its new online reading rooms - NJ.com