About Us

What users say about Wowbrary

"The library is more current than I thought and gets books of interest to me."
 
"I love getting up Saturday morning and seeing what is new for me to get from the library."
 
"This has replaced my book store browsing; it's so easy to use."
 
"I've learned a lot about my library."
 
"I'm very impressed and very happy with what I see ... it is a lovely site and absolutely engaging."
 
"A wonderful service! Spread it to other libraries."
 
"The library is coming into the 21st century."

What is Wowbrary

Wowbrary was created to make public libraries more visible and accessible to everyone.

Wowbrary regularly informs you by email and/or RSS about your chosen public library’s newest books, movies and music. We make it easy for you to browse through the latest additions and place a hold on a new title. This is a free user service supported by grants, donations, sponsorships, book sale commissions and volunteers.

Wowbrary is a project of Interactive Sciences, Inc., a California nonprofit 501(c)(3) public-benefit corporation that uses technology to help with social needs. Beginning in 2001, Interactive Sciences has been building experiments to research creative approaches to better connect people with the many resources available via their libraries. Wowbrary is the first of these innovations to be released for general use. As avid library fans, the staff and volunteers at Interactive Sciences are thrilled by the great interest it has aroused.

You can contact us by email at .

What are the Top Choices

Libraries often add dozens or hundreds of new items each week. To keep the Wowbrary email newsletters you receive from being too large, each email shows you at most 20 "Top Choices." These are selected automatically to be the best-selling of the new items your library added that week but with no more than two per genre, when possible, so there's lots of variety. The process also favors items with full descriptions over others. All of the week's new items still appear in the categories on the left, so if you want to be sure to see each new DVD, for example, just click on that category.
 
Please note that we use an automatic process to select the Top Choices to avoid any political, religious, or other human bias. We do not then review the list to remove items we think might be controversial because that too could introduce bias.
 
Public libraries and our non-profit organization are committed to serving all society and to the principle of free speech and expression of ideas. That means from time to time each of us sees books at a library that we don't agree with. It is our hope that encouraging everyone to read and explore ideas more fully will help us as individuals and together to improve society.

What users like about Wowbrary

• Knowing about all the newest books, movies, and music
• Ease, convenience, speed of browsing
• Categorization
• It comes automatically
• It makes the library more visible, transparent