Introduction

Although I frequently buy books (paper and electronic), it’s a major expense these days. Some engineering books cost upward of £100, even in used condition. I don’t subscribe to any magazine or journal currently, simply because it’s hard to find the ones that are of reasonable cost and will provide consistent value-for-money.

By chance I checked out my local real physical library. It has fewer engineering books than the typical engineer may have; so few, it shares a bookshelf with Parenting.

They won't accept donated books either, due to their rules; book bureaucracy is a thing here.  

However, interestingly, the library is part of a larger group (of apparently 300 libraries) that allows inter-library loans. The loans include e-books and e-magazines, so I decided to explore!

South-East England

If you’re in the South-East of England (in particular, the area covered from Reading (that's the name of a town, pronounced 'redding'), to Southend-on-Sea and Kent, and including some London boroughs such as Camden), then you may have access to the following magazines for free, simply by using your library login. In my case, I was able to access a Reading Library libby app with an account from a totally different library and was able to access a whole load of magazines.

Here are some that looked interesting (click to enlarge): (Image sources: online magazine cover or contents pages, hopefully, fair use).

DataQuest

This is an Indian IT journal in English. It looks pretty good, although some of the content is country-specific, a lot of it looks to be of global interest.

CQ

This is a well-known US amateur radio magazine.

Popular Mechanics

This is a very well-known US magazine that covers some general interest/DIY topics.

PCWorld

It sounds like an old UK store, but it’s a US magazine that may be helpful for examining the latest consumer trends related to computers.

CODE

It's not quite Dr Dobbs level, but it looks like a great US magazine for those interested in software development.

PCQuest

This is an Indian magazine, looks consumer-oriented like PCWorld, but may have a few interesting articles for engineers.

Other Regions?

If you have access to interesting e-books/e-magazines/e-journals through libraries in your region, please share the information!

Note: Let’s restrict the discussion to services offered by real physical (brick and mortar) libraries around the world, excluding online archive sites such as Internet Archive and World Radio History (although they are extremely useful, of course), and of course excluding illegal download sites with PDF collections.

I’m specifically curious about what resources bricks-and-mortar libraries offer online in different regions.

Thanks for reading.