OverDrive to Streamline Platform and Expand Offerings
By Michael Kelley Jun 15, 2011(Story updated to include comments from two Ohio library directors).
OverDrive, the dominant ebook vendor for public libraries, is promising major revisions to its platform and a significant expansion of its collections as competition within the burgeoning library ebook market increases with new and revamped platforms from rivals like EBSCO and 3M.
Although full details won't be available until a demonstration at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in New Orleans next week, David Burleigh, OverDrive's director of marketing, said in a press release that the company held a series of meetings recently with the 9-member Ohio Metro Library Directors group (OverDrive is based in Cleveland), and has subsequently devised a streamlined lending platform as well as an expanded collection that the company is calling OverDrive Win.
"Like so many libraries around the globe, the nine Ohio metropolitan libraries have experienced unprecedented demand for ebooks, so it was essential for us to meet with OverDrive to discuss the future of ebook lending and to conceive new models that would benefit libraries and publishers," Pat Losinski, director of the Columbus Metropolitan Library and spokesperson for the Ohio Metro Library Directors group said through the statement released by OverDrive. "We entered this discussion with four main goals, and the solutions presented check every box for moving libraries forward in the ebook space," he said in the statement. Losinski could not be reached directly for comment.
| Web searches for the term "library ebooks" illustrate skyrocketing demand in recent months and spikes of interest each year following the holidays, when many people received ereaders as gifts |
Among other things, the new model will eliminate the need for librarians to deal with various ebook file formats. Currently, OverDrive provides ebooks in three formats: EPUB, PDF and Mobipocket; and audiobooks in two: MP3 and WMA. Libraries must choose which formats to provide patrons. For example, this is a title from the Cleveland Public Library that comes in three separate formats. Under the new system, librarians and patrons will not face this clutter and have to select only "ebook" or "audiobook."
It was not clear whether this would eliminate the need to purchase different versions separately for each format. Nor was it clear whether this implied that all formats will be available for all titles.
But this feature appears to play into the single biggest priority of the Ohio metro library directors: ease of use.
"We did coordinate our message as a group and came up with a list of our biggest priorities and communicated that to them," Kim Fender, the director of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, told LJ. "We were seeing similar concerns about how complicated it was to figure out how to download econtent and that patrons wanted it to be easier, like an Amazon model, with fewer steps. That was our single greatest priority," she said.
Ease of use was necessary to ensure that libraries remained "a viable part of the ebook lending model," she said.
"This is going to be so good for customer service," said Clyde Scoles, director of the Toledo Public Library.
OverDrive will also enable patron driven acquisition (PDA) — where a purchase is triggered when a sufficient number of patrons' select a title in the catalog —for popular and best-selling ebook titles. Further details were not available but it would likely have to have major publishers behind it in order to maximize its benefits to libraries and publishers. Depending on its implementation, PDA could also skew purchase requests heavily in favor of participating publishers, at least initially.
The PDA feature was particularly intriguing to Fender.
“With PDA we won’t be always guessing how many copies to buy. We can see the demand and we won’t have unused copies sitting on the digital shelf,” she said.
OverDrive will also launch "open ebook titles" free of digital rights management (DRM). The only DRM-free books currently available via OverDrive are the "Project Gutenberg" collections. Publishers will now be able to supply books without DRM that will be integrated into OverDrive's service, similar to the arrangement Cory Doctorow made last year with Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo. OverDrive has supplied DRM-free audiobooks since 2008.
The company is also planning to expand its offerings that are available on a simultaneous access, multi-user model. The new materials offered under this model will include romance, self-help, young adult, children, and other fiction materials. The titles still have a lending period, but there are no waitlists or holds.
Librarians at a BookExpo America panel in May urged publishers and distributors to offer instantaneous, unlimited access options saying they'd be willing to "pay much more" for a concurrent, unlimited model.
OverDrive already offers this model (called "Max Access") for video and audiobooks. As far as ebooks go, the company currently only offers Liquid Comics in this way. It was unclear if this would mean more content from publishers, or simply changing the access model for material already in the offerings.
Burleigh said the company will "add hundreds of thousands of in-copyright ebook and digital audiobook records with free 'ebook samples' for immediate access on reading devices and platforms," and Kindle Library Lending will soon be supported, as previously announced.
"Complete publisher eBook catalogs on 'Virtual Branch' websites-featuring all front, mid, and backlist titles in virtually every subject-will provide readers with the chance to discover and immediately sample tens of thousands of bestselling and popular ebook titles from their local library," said Dan Stasiewski, a lead library advocate at OverDrive. "This, along with more simultaneous access collections and a patron driven acquisition model, will reinforce the library as the first stop for discovering and enjoying books, both online and off," he said in a statement.
OverDrive declined further comment. This story will update if further details become available.
