Check out some of our favorite online resources that you can access for free from home (or anywhere with an internet connection) with your Southbury Public Library card! Our favorites include: Kanopy, Consumer Reports Online, and Libby.
Kanopy offers streaming of movies and television shows, including many popular BBC series, The Great Courses, and more.
With your library card number and accessing it through the link on our website, you can browse all that Consumer Reports Online has to offer, including its in depth comparison tools.
Last but not least is Libby, our app for ebooks, audiobooks, and many popular magazines.
For all of these online resources, you need the number on the back of your library card that starts with "24019" and enter it in with no spaces. While Kanopy and Consumer Reports online are for Southbury library card holders only, many area libraries have access to Libby.
Kanopy Streaming:
Stream a wide variety of television shows and movies, including many BBC series and The Great Courses with kanopy. Kanopy has more than 30,000 titles, including award-winning documentaries, acclaimed films, rare and hard-to-find titles, and classic films. You can access Kanopy on your desktop or laptop computer, mobile device, TV apps, and more.
Kanopy is free for anyone with a Southbury library card; all you need to do to get started streaming films is to visit southbury.kanopy.com !
One of our favorite parts of Kanopy is Kanopy Kids, which features a wide variety of fun and education children's content (including shows like Sesame Street, films, and animated storybooks) that won't use any of your monthly credits. To access Kanopy Kids, log in to your Kanopy account, then click "Kids" in the top right corner of your homepage. If you're in the Kanopy mobile app, tap "More" at the bottom of the screen, then "Go to Kanopy Kids."
You can access Kanopy as a website here, as an Apple App here, as a Google Play Store App for Androids here, or search in your SmartTV's app store.
Consumer Reports Online:
Access all of Consumer Reports Online with your Southbury Public Library card! This includes ratings (and being able to filter and compare) and articles. We like this even better than the magazine itself because it is easier to search than via the paper index (and goes back further than a year, for being able to filter ratings, and being able to access it from our couch.
You do have to use the link above (also linked here) in order to access it with your library card; just going to the main Consumer Reports website will not work.
Libby:
Libby (formerly Overdrive) gives you access to ebooks, audiobooks, and magazines right from your smartphone, tablet, or computer and allows you to check out up to 7 items at a time! Magazines can be accessed on demand, but ebooks and audiobooks are like regular physical books where if someone is using that copy, you will have to place a hold. You can filter just by "Available Now" and by item type (ebook, audiobook, etc.) and see just what you can check out right away. For us, this almost always includes an item of interest. Libby is also available as an app on the Apple App Store, on the Google Play Store for Android devices, and on the Amazon App Store for newer Kindle Fires.