As we reported on at the end of February, a coalition of library workers and advocates have organized a March of Action for libraries. The coalition is hosting a series of Congressional briefings in response to the growing concern about fair access to digital rights, including ebooks, audio books and other digital resources. The coalition invited concerned stakeholders, such as librarians, writers, and allied partners, with to meet with elected officials and policy makers. Along a similar vein, a Texas panel recently held a meeting which primarily focused on the surging trend of book censorsh ..read more

Overdrive announced last year that they were sunsetting their main library app, the Overdrive Media Console. They have now removed it from Google Play and the Apple Store last week. This shouldn’t come as a big surprise, they started displaying in-app messaging to OverDrive app users informing them about the upcoming sunset of the legacy app with a prompt to upgrade to Libby. The company plans to fully discontinue the legacy OverDrive app at the end of April 2023. At that time, users who try to access your library’s collection in the OverDrive app will need to upgrade to Libby. The legacy Ove ..read more

Libraries all over the world are loaning out a copious number of ebooks. Overdrive has just announced that 127 libraries have surpassed one million checkouts over the course of 2022. In total, 555 million ebooks, audiobooks, digital magazines and more were checked out by readers last year. In 2022, Los Angeles Public Library became the first library ever to hit ten million checkouts in a calendar year.  Libraries from 7 countries reached the million checkout mark. In the United States, 36 states are represented on the list. The Toronto Public A complete list of library systems in 2022’s ..read more

Borrowing audiobooks and ebooks from the public library is very popular in 2022. More people have checked out digital content than ever before. This is due to a few factors, the rising cost of buying ebooks and audiobooks is getting more expensive and libraries have also invested heavily in their collections, to cut down on waiting times. During the year, readers borrowed 555 million ebooks, audiobooks, digital magazines, comics and other digital content, a 10% increase over 2021. This record circulation led to another milestone: Readers have checked out a total of 3 billion digital books fro ..read more

Overdrive has announced that since the year 2000, they have facilitated over 3 billion eBook checkouts. These have been borrowed by millions of readers from libraries around the world through OverDrive and the Libby reading app.  More readers than ever before are borrowing ebooks and audiobooks from their local library through the Libby app. Back in 2012, OverDrive celebrated 100 million checkouts, and a few short years later in 2018 after unveiling the new, user-friendly Libby app, surpassed 1 billion checkouts. And just this year in 2022, that number reached over 3 billion. Digita ..read more

The advent of e-books might be showcased by many as the advent of a new era for readers and writers though the ground realities can be vastly different than what catches the eye. As a blog post pointed out, the good old paper books might still hold the edge vis-a-vis their paper counterpart considering that these require little to no maintenance and can last for centuries at a time. In contrast, their digital counterparts require frequent nurturing and upkeeping to ensure they don’t lose their relevance in just a decade. Among the biggest issues with e-books are hardware and format obsolescen ..read more

The Association for Computing Machinery or ACM has announced it is making available all of its publications that date back to the 1950s till the end of 2000. Specifically, the publications date back to 1951, which makes for all that the organization published during the first fifty years of its existence. The digitized version of the published articles is now available to view and download on any device by anybody completely for free. Together, that makes for a comprehensive collection of more than 117,500 articles covering almost all topics related to computing. The topics should be varied g ..read more

Hoopla and OneDrive are digital media services used by more than 8,500 libraries in the US, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. They allow library patrons access to movies, audiobooks, and ebooks. Libraries buy a subscription to their services, and unlike buying physical books, librarians don’t always have input or control of what’s included. Recently, some librarians have noted materials they found concerning and contacted the Library Freedom Project who are calling on Hoopla and OneDrive for transparency on its methods for deciding titles. The digital ebook catalogue contains many controvers ..read more

Overdrive has discontinued their main Overdrive Media Console app for Android and iOS. Starting last month, the app is no longer listed on Google Play the Apple App Store. Existing users who have the app will be able to use it, until the end of the year and then all of the services will be shut off. Overdrive is encouraging users to upgrade to Libby, which is the new app they launched a couple of years ago. It has a better audiobook, ebook and magazine experience. Users in the US, can use the app to send digital content right to a Kindle. Libby is not currently available to download from the ..read more

Master Class are online tutorials that are hosted by some very famous people. Neil Gaimon has one on the art of storytelling and ditto with Dan Brown who has one on writing thrillers. You might have seen Masterclass ads running on social media or YouTube, but might not have yet pulled the trigger to subscribe. There is now another alternative, the public library. Hoopla digital, the category-creating digital service for public libraries, and MasterClass, the streaming platform where anyone can learn from the world’s best across a wide range of subjects, announced a partnership to offer select ..read more