NLC Technology News: Free Microsoft Office 365 for libraries?

Does your library use Microsoft Office? If so, are you paying the annual $100+ subscription for Microsoft Office 365? If you are, you may want to take advantage of the free Microsoft 365 Business Basic licenses for a “Public library that provides general library services without charge to all residents of a given community, district or region.” This offer is good for up to 300 library staff! To enroll for this offer, the library will need to set up a Microsoft for Nonprofits account. If the library has purchased $40 Office Standard licenses through TechSoup recently, the creation of a Microsoft for Nonprofits account is part of this process.

It’s important to understand differences between Office 365 and Office Standard so the correct version is acquired for the right PCs. Office 365 is the subscription “cloud” version of the Office apps that allows access to them on any device the subscriber logs into with their Microsoft 365 account. Office Standard only has to be paid for once and is installed on a single PC and can only be used on that PC. Office Standard does not require the PC be logged into a Microsoft 365 account to be used making Office Standard the best choice for use on patron/public computers. Office 365 is best for computers used by library staff. The other nice feature of Microsoft 365 is the 1tb of OneDrive cloud storage provided to each user. OneDrive also make it easy for library staff to share their files with each other and back these files up.

If the library doesn’t need to have Office Standard on all of the patron/public PCs, the free and open source LibreOffice (formally OpenOffice) software suite is a good alternative. LibreOffice will also allow you to continue to edit Publisher files since Microsoft has dropped that app from their office suite.

If you have any questions about this or other technology, please contact me.

Andrew “Sherm” Sherman
Library Technology Support Specialist
Nebraska Library Commission
402-471-4559