Salt Lake County Library provides residents with a wide array of digital media and personalized technical assistance through its expanded online collections and a one-on and one appointment system. The library's digital offerings include tens of thousands of eBooks, audiobooks, and streaming videos available to all cardholders.
Extensive Digital Collections and Apps
The County Library maintains a massive digital catalog accessible through the Libby app by OverDrive. This collection features more than 80,000 eBooks, 50,000 eAudiobooks, and 6,000 digital magazines. According to library information, digital magazines do not count toward a user's checkout limit, allowing patrons to borrow as many titles as they wish from that specific category.
Users can also manage multiple library cards within the Libby interface to track all holds and checkouts in a single location. For younger readers, the library provides access to Sora, an OverDrive application designed for students. Access to titles through Sora depends on specific school guidelines, but students can use their student IDs to enter the platform. To view children's and teen-specific titles, the library directs users to utilize the Libby app.
Multimedia and Educational Resources
The digital library extends beyond books into video and music streaming via hoopla. The hoopla video service provides access to more than 24,000 downloadable and streaming videos for all age groups, including educational content like The Great Courses, BBC programs, Sesame Street episodes, and Hallmark movies.
For music enthusiasts, the library offers hoopla Music, which contains a collection of over 320,000 albums spanning various genres, including recent bestsellers. Additionally, the library provides specialized resources for early learners through Tumblebooks and TumbleMath. Tumblebooks serves pre-readers and elementary students with animated storybooks, eBooks, and National Geographic videos, while TumbleMath offers math-focused picture books with narration and animation for children in grades K-6, often accompanied by quizzes and lesson plans.
Access to News and Archives
Salt Lake County Library provides significant access to news archives and international press. Through ProQuest Newspapers, patrons can access full-text versions of 300 different newspapers, including major national and international titles such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and The Deseret News.
Local history is also accessible through Utah NewsSearch, a digital service from the Utah Press Association that allows users to search all of Utah's newspapers by keyword or specific filters like city, county, or zip code. Furthermore, the Utah Digital Newspapers collection contains over one million pages of historic Utah newspaper archives, an archive that continues to grow every month. While the library offers various digital magazine solutions, it is noted that the Flipster service will be discontinued as of December 31, 2025.
Personalized Librarian Assistance
For patrons requiring more than self-service digital tools, the County Library offers a Librarian by Appointment service. This program provides free 30-minute personalized sessions with a librarian to assist with complex questions or technical tasks. Available services for these appointments include help with job searching and interview preparation, setting up email or social media accounts, and configuring personal devices for eBook reading.
Librarians can also assist with general research using library databases and provide proctoring services. For those who cannot meet in person, the library accepts short reference questions via email at any time, promising a response from a librarian within 48 hours or two business days.
Appointment Scheduling and Locations
The appointment service is available at various County Library branches throughout the region. Patrons can request to meet at several locations, including Bingham Creek, Daybreak, Draper, Granite, Herriman, Holladay, Hunter, Kearns, Magna, Millcreek, Riverton, Sandy, South Jordan, Taylorsville, West Jordan, West Valley, and Whitmore. The Ruth Vine Tyler location is also an option for meetings.
When scheduling, the library allows users to indicate their availability during morning hours (11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.), afternoon hours (1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.), or evening hours (6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.) from Monday through Saturday, with evening availability specifically noted for Monday through Thursday. The library also offers a collection of over 5,400 Spanish-language titles within the Libby app to serve diverse community needs.
Requesting Services
To facilitate these services, the library requires appointment requests to include basic contact information such as name, email, and phone number, along with a description of the topic for discussion. All requests are subject to the County Library's Privacy Notices.
