OverDrive Ensuring Access to the Largest eBook Catalog for Libraries

At OverDrive, we always advocate on behalf of readers to have and maintain continued access to the largest eBook catalog from our partner libraries and schools. With evolving eBook and digital business rules, OverDrive must constantly adapt to the distribution rights and restrictions that authors and publishers require for library lending of their intellectual property. It’s our important role – and core to our mission – to advocate on behalf of our partner libraries, while upholding publisher usage requirements.

As a result of OverDrive’s cooperation with hundreds of forward-thinking librarians, we are proud to have the largest available catalog of popular eBook and digital content for library lending, negotiated over years, from nearly one thousand supplying publishers. Yes, we are navigating new terrain and challenges every day, while at the same time adding thousands of new titles from dozens of new suppliers who have joined the public library eBook lending channel – all as a result of this existing marketplace.

OverDrive always seeks to obtain the broadest catalog rights and permissions. We also advocate that the investment our library partners make in their OverDrive digital catalogs (cost of materials, MARC records, promoting audience, and decreasing staff costs) provides the highest return with growing circulation and turnover, while honoring the obligations we have from publishers and authors.

We serve a growing network of libraries, schools, corporations, government agencies and institutions, and every week add new publishers and thousands of new eBook titles. Each publisher or author has the ability, on a title-by-title basis, to set the permissions, copyright protection settings, price, and other rules associated with digital lending of their eBook or other digital content. These permissions are constantly under review by publishers, authors, agents, their associations, and many others that impact how we grow our catalog, which now exceeds more than 500,000 digital titles. Under the permissions set by authors and publishers, 99.9% of US public libraries served by OverDrive have access to the exact same catalog of eBook, audiobook, music, and video titles.

Here are a few of the restrictions and rules that publishers and authors require for access to their materials,which have been communicated to OverDrive’s library partners:

1. Geographic and Territorial Rights: Publishers make their content available based on the geographic territory for which they have rights, expressed on a title-by-title basis. This is why our Canadian, UK and Australian libraries see different catalogs when they log into Content Reserve/Marketplace.
2. Library, School, or Special Library Markets: Select suppliers (publishers, film studios, music labels, etc.) have the ability to (and a few do) make their content available only to schools or only to public libraries This may be because the supplier has granted “exclusive” rights to other publishers for these markets, or the publisher may have its own sales force that calls on accounts in these markets.
3. Different Formats and Different Re-distribution Rights: In some cases, multiple publishers may have the same book available, each providing different formats or different geographic permissions. As a result, we occasionally experience changes to title availability where a publisher or author signs a new distribution agreement that alters these rights.
4. Connection to Library Service Area: As Steve Potash communicated in writing to every one of our library partners earlier this year, select publishers set restrictions on their catalogs where the library allows access to the library’s digital collection by card holders that have no connection to the library’s service area. We are constantly working with library IT teams to test and validate patrons’ card status, before they can download copyrighted materials. In very few cases, where an institution does not restrict download access to only patrons with connections to their service area (such as residents, students, property or business owners) there may be limits on access to select publishers’ catalogs.

Every day we are engaged in discussions and negotiations with publishers along with upgrading our Content Reserve distribution platform to encourage publishers’ participation in the largest catalog of eBook, audiobook, music and video suppliers available for library lending. Increased and continued publisher participation is enabled by providing authors and publishers the ability to control how, where, and when their titles are made available for your selection. We take our trusted position very seriously, and are investing in our role to provide you with a growing “marketplace” of digital content.

To that end, if you ever have any questions or concerns about your service, please contact your OverDrive Account Specialist directly. We make every effort to get back to you within 24 hours. In this age of Internet gratification, we know news spreads fast and need to ensure what we communicate is accurate, objective, courteous and professional.
(Karen Estrovich, OverDrive Digital Library Blog, December 12th, 2011)

Reading Between the Lines

It’s been quite a few years since I bothered to put out what passes for a Christmas village display at our house. As it was, Wendtville would be a pretty strange place to live, combining as it does the interests of a librarian and an automotive guy.

The first two units were a miniature gas station and a used car dealership, the second building so small that it didn’t even come with a light bulb. As we acquired and parked various vehicles from the same set, my husband wondered whether little ceramic vandals would roam through the dark car lot causing random acts of damage to the inventory.

So I bought a set of battery powered streetlights which were a royal pain to operate and sucked batteries faster than two kids with straws in a seven ounce bottle of soda. We soon found a little police car to keep the vandals in check and only turned the lights on to impress guests.

The larger automotive service station was added a year or two later along with a wrecker truck, two ceramic mechanics and a couple more cars. A gas war immediately broke out between the first gas station and the larger one down the street; pretty soon both registered identically higher prices.

There were also three libraries – the main building and two more branches accumulated as gifts from different sets – as well as a bookmobile. Little ceramic children carried their books past the gas pumps and squatted under the streetlights next to the used cars to read.

That might have defined the village limits except friends gifted us with a bank (to issue loans for the used cars), a city hall (to pay the librarians), a bookstore, a car wash and a fire station. The 1950’s style diner and classic cars parked all round a musical ice skating rink arrived next, thus making it possible for the little people to read, drive around in clean cars, eat and get gas. We placed the fire station next to the diner in case they served four-alarm chili.

Surrounded as we are these days by economic and political complexities, there’s a mighty temptation to attempt casting real life in a similarly ideal mold. Alas, we cannot pick and choose the component parts of our own village as we might assemble one manufactured by Department 56.

The people and opportunities in our community, however widely that is defined, are not so easily or permanently arranged. Nonetheless, what we acknowledge as well as what we ignore around us in real life sometimes amounts to the same sort of artificial village construction.

Other than in times of crisis, a sense of community is most often visible during the holiday season. Gifts are gathered for needy children and donations pour in for various charities. Efforts are made to reach out and pull into the circle those among us whose lives don’t usually connect. At this time of the year we sometimes realize our own actions can have an impact on others in ways that we weren’t otherwise aware.

It’s that sense of community connectivity and interdependence that has always appealed to me when watching the traditional holiday film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Average citizen George Bailey wishes he had never been born and, with the temporary granting of his request, sees the town of Bedford Falls as it would have been without his influence. Each of us has the potential to make that same profound difference every day in a positive or negative sense.

A library, with its collection of diverse opinions and unlimited potential to access the writings of all humankind, represents a community of knowledge. In safety and privacy, library customers can freely choose to construct a personal information village by either selecting only that with which they are most comfortable or by gradually acquiring structures of more divergent thought.

My colleague David Polodna, former director of the Winding Rivers Library System, once ruminated on the way in which a community values its library alongside other municipal services.

“Libraries are as ‘essential’ as police and fire departments,” Polodna wrote in 2003. Even though a library isn’t thought of as an emergency agency, he continued, “Libraries work in proactive ways to inform, educate, and assist people to avoid the traumas in the first place. We offer programs and materials on fire safety, personal and home safety, and child rearing skills and responsibilities. In addition, we offer constructive recreational opportunities that can keep people away from the temptation of other activities that can get them into trouble.” There are many times when librarians provide answers in personal situations that could genuinely qualify as an information emergency.

At this year’s annual budget meeting in the town where I live, our chairman ably fielded a question from a taxpayer who complained he was being forced to support a library he never used. “You pay for the fire department and ambulance though you hope you don’t have to call them to your door. And you may not drive on all the town roads,” the questioner was told. “But the library is a positive thing for our community and nothing is stopping you from taking advantage of all it has to offer and getting more than your money’s worth.”

Amen.

Hopefully our citizens will remember the public library as one place in our village where they can find free illumination. May the glow of learning continue to shine from library windows throughout the holidays and upcoming year!

Kris Adams Wendt

Reading Between the Lines

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayna

We are on the threshold of the holidays when the cookbook aisle at most public libraries is a busy place. Most women I know are about to throw themselves into turning out cookies like elves on espresso.

I am, however, a kitchen klutz who did hard time in Remedial Home Economics as a high school senior. Cookbooks given to me by well-meaning friends have actually become mildewed from lack of exercise. I’m the one who habitually brings raw vegetables and dip to the holiday feast. Or Jell-O accompanied by festive soda straws. Or cream liqueurs which, when camouflaged lightly with milk, fortify the real cooks in my family with what we started calling “enhanced calcium.”

Last weekend, while checking the cookbook cupboard for instructions on how to safely microwave a whole squash without attracting the attention of the Town of Newbold Volunteer Fire Department, I ran across a book called I Didn’t Know That: or Why We Say the Things We Say edited by Karlen Evins.

I didn’t know that I owned it and can only assume the slim paperback may have been fraternizing with my cookbooks because “I didn’t know that” is frequently heard in my kitchen. As in “I didn’t know that tin of baking powder was dated September 1975.”

The phrase “I didn’t know that!” is also uttered many times a week in our nation’s public libraries, where equal attention is paid to all questions – whether they concern matters that will have a significant impact on somebody’s life or just something trivial that’s bugging someone.

In her introduction, Evins tells the story of a new bride preparing her first Thanksgiving dinner by of illustrating how knowing what’s behind certain traditions may enable us to take a fresh approach to life’s ongoing challenges.

Evins wrote that as the young woman began to dress the turkey, “she cut off the ends of the bird and placed it in a pan. Her new husband, not certain of the proper cooking procedure, asked his bride, ‘Why do you cut off the ends?’ Her reply: ‘Because my mother always did it.’

“Later that day, the mother of the cook dropped by for lunch, and the newlywed husband thought it an opportune time to learn more about cooking turkey, so he asked his mother-in-law, ‘Why do you cut off the ends of a turkey before you cook it?’

“With as much consideration as the daughter had given the question earlier, the mother-in-law answered, ‘Because MY mother always did.’

“Finally the meal was prepared, the guests were seated and the grandmother of the bride was posed the same question by the now anxious and eager grandson-in-law. ‘Grandma, why do you cut off the ends of a turkey before you cook it?’ he asked.

“With trembling hands, the grandmother replied, ‘Well in my day, the pans were only this big!’”

Karlin Evins concludes, “This story illustrates a point and that is that our reasons for many of the things we do today make little sense logically, though at one time, perhaps they did.”

The homily could easily apply to library policies and procedures devised B.C. (before computers) or otherwise held onto long after the reasons for them have faded into the mists of bibliographic time.

Recent weeks have seen much speculation on how congressional cooks might influence what’s brought to the table in a presidential election year. Not only the federal budget table, but also in the sense of what’s on the actual dinner table of ordinary Americans hungry for a meaningful role in their government and a greater sense of economic well-being.

Speaking personally as a member of our notoriously fact-based profession, much of what passes for info-tainment in the political arena these days – at both the state and national levels and especially on the debate stage – is enough to drive a person to enhanced calcium.

From a librarian’s point of view, trying to set a national course without knowing or understanding our common history and literature is like wasting the ends of a perfectly good turkey. “I didn’t know that” is no excuse. “I don’t need to know that” is even worse.

If new cooks merely end up following traditional recipes that value concentrations of wealth and power but devalue working people, the turkeys will still be dry and tasteless regardless of being surrounded by different distracting garnishes or presented on a blue or a red platter.

Kris Adams Wendt

WPLC OverDrive Offers Publicity and Support

At the recent WPLC board meeting, it was noted that Christmas is right around the corner. With that, we can probably expect another tidal wave of e-reader gifts and questions from their new owners. The bulked-up buying pool will be in effect by then, too, and more titles will be available, so traffic will be heavy.

To get ready, here are a few ideas for publicity and support.

PUBLICITY

• OverDrive has a video with ideas on promoting the collection:

Community Outreach.
Maximize circs … get the word out Learn creative techniques for introducing new users to your OverDrive service. We'll showcase a range of promotional ideas from high circulating libraries that you can implement inside and outside your library.

      View the slides and/or the recording: http://overdrive.com/LearningCenter/viewnow.aspx 

• Check out the marketing materials on the OverDrive site; most of these can be customizable. I'll distribute any that have been customized for WPLC as I see them, or let me know which you'd like. 

SUPPORT

• More OverDrive videos on the training site: http://overdrive.com/LearningCenter/viewnow.aspx; See both: the e-book explosion, and Patron assistance
• Keep up with changes to the site by reading the WPLC list; I'll also post FAQs coming through the support email

(Jane Richard, WILS & WPLC)

Winning BIG Support for Your Rural Library - Webinar

A Small but Powerful Webinar for Winning Big Support for Your Rural Library

Join this webinar for an introduction to the revised edition of the popular Small But Powerful Guide to Winning Big Support for Your Rural Library, a new toolkit from the American Library Association’s Committee on Rural, Native, and Tribal Libraries of All Kinds, Office for Literacy and Outreach Services, and the Association for Rural and Small Libraries. This webinar will introduce you to the tips and strategies presented in the toolkit, share the experiences of a rural librarian who has built support for her library, and introduce you to some of the additional advocacy tools and resources from the American Library Association.

Presenters: Miguel Figueroa, director, ALA Office for Literacy & Outreach Services; Susan Hill Pieper, director, Paulding County Carnegie Library (OH) and editor Rural Library Services Newsletter; and Jennifer Peterson, community manager at WebJunction, board member, Association for Rural & Small Libraries and chair of ALA Rural, Native, and Tribal Libraries of All Kinds Committee.

A Small But Powerful Webinar for Winning Big Support for Your Rural Library

December 14, 2011, Monday    1 pm Central time

Register here

If you have questions, or would be interested in attending a follow up webinar with other Wisconsin librarians, please contact Jane Richard:

Jane Richard

Wisconsin Library Services

Wisconsin Public Library Consortium 

jrichard@wils.wisc.edu

728 State St., Room 464

Madison, WI  53706-1494

608/263-5051 //  fax: 608/262-6067

Make Tracks to the Gilman Public Library

“Make Tracks to the Gilman Public Library”

The week of November 21-25 will be very exciting at Gilman’s WTCPL when Denise Korenuk, head librarian, and a team of volunteers, offer a variety of fun and educational activities and fundraisers during hunting season.

The activities will include:

·        Wear Blaze Orange into the library and enter your name for Friday’s Grand Prize drawing.

·        Bring antlers to display for the week and vote for your favorite rack. Only 5₵ per vote.

·        Raffle baskets on display for SILENT AUCTION bidding all week. Drawing on 6pm Friday.

·        Daily drawing entry for a free movie rental at the Gilman Corner Store with every item you check out from the WTCPL.

·        Add your personalized leaf to the “Thankful Tree” every time you stop in.

·        Deer coloring contest (Prizes for different age groups)

·        Each day  children can enjoy a different craft project and activity.

·        Scavenger knowledge hunt going on all week.

·        Check for Story Time each day.

The Gilman Library will host an OPEN HOUSE on Monday, November 21^st with holiday treats, coffee and apple cider.  Live music will be provided by Jerry Teclaw  from 5:30 until 7:30pm.

(The Gilman Public Library will be closed on Thanksgiving Day)

(Friends of the Gilman Public Library)

Windows XP at 10 - No Life Support

Businesses That Have Not Begun the Windows 7 Transition May Find Themselves Scrambling

A Microsoft official said the company has no plans to extend Windows XP's looming retirement date in order to give companies whose business systems run on the aging OS more time to migrate to a newer version of Windows--and that could be a problem for those who have yet to begin the transition.

"There's absolutely no chance" that Windows XP's April, 2014 end-of-life date, when Microsoft will end all support, will be extended, said Rich Reynolds, general manager for Windows Commercial marketing, in an interview.

Windows XP officially turned 10 years old on Tuesday. Microsoft introduced the software back in 2001, following development under the code name Whistler. It featured numerous enhancements compared to its most immediate predecessor, Windows 2000. XP introduced a streamlined, task-based user interface that allowed users to more quickly find their go-to applications and files through the Start Menu or lockable Taskbar. That, along with improvements to power management, faster startup, new networking features like Internet Connection Sharing, and a general reputation for stability, made XP Microsoft's most enduring enterprise OS to date. 

The company has had difficulty getting customers to upgrade to newer versions of Windows. Only a handful of enterprises moved to the widely-panned Windows Vista and it's only now, two years after its release, that businesses are starting to adopt Windows 7 in significant numbers. 

About 25% of all currently deployed enterprise systems are now running Windows 7, though 90% of businesses have a plan to migrate the OS, according to Reynolds. Reynolds said he's worried that businesses that have not begun the Windows 7 transition may find themselves scrambling as XP's expiration date draws near. "What we're concerned about is organizations that haven't started yet," he said. Aircraft manufacturer Boeing, which began upgrading its 187,000 employee desktops to Windows 7 last year, won't have the rollout finished until next year, said Reynolds.

"It takes anywhere from twelve to fourteen months to do the planning and application remediation," he said. Microsoft is offering a number of tools to help business plan and execute the move from Windows XP to Windows 7. 

Reynolds said very few organizations are planning to move directly from XP to Windows 8, which won't arrive until sometime next year and features a new, Metro-style interface borrowed from Windows Phone.

(Paul McDougall - InformationWeek on October 25, 2011)

Welcome Neillsville Public Library to V-Cat

Neillsville Public Library officially joined the Wisconsin Valley Library Service shared automation system, known as V-Cat on October 11, 2011.  The staff worked very hard to prepare for this switchover from their Follett automation system.  Overall, things went smoothly on their first day of using V-Cat (or the SirsiDynix Horizon automation system administered by WVLS)

At one point on Tuesday, staff had patrons anxiously waiting in line to register for their new library cards.  This was an exciting day for staff and the community.

We wish them success with the new system and welcome to V-Cat.
(Inese Christman, WVLS)

Reading Between the Lines

Apple 2e circa 1986

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."   -- Steve Jobs

Last night’s announcement of the untimely passing of Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc, launched me on a search through my old “Bookmark” weekly newspaper column archives for first mention of Apple computer use as a library professional.

The retrospective viewpoint that follows below is mildly hilarious given all that has transpired in the intervening 25 years. The terminology as well as the technology was all new. The floppy disks were huge and actually still “floppy” in our first Apple 2e, the workhorse of the Apple line which was manufactured from 1983 to 1994 and has the distinction of being the longest-lived Apple computer of all time. One of the smartest things I ever did back then was print paper copies of my columns as a backup. All those disks have long since gone the way of the dodo along with all the machines that could read them.

The Bookmark February 11, 1986

The subject today is computers. Thanks to the generosity of a grant obtained by the Wisconsin Valley Library Service, the Rhinelander District Library now has one! I’ve been writing the Bookmark on the computer for the past three weeks.

That might not seem remarkable to you confirmed “hackers” out there, but you have to remember that I worked in a Children’s Department with one functioning electrical outlet until January of last year. Because there was no place to plug in an electric check out machine, we were still using a pencil dater (rubber numbers held by a metal attachment stuck on a pencil) the way librarians did in 1898 when our library opened its doors. A computer was out of the question until our recent building project.

For the next couple of years, our new computer’s main function will be to help our library participate in a “retrospective conversion” project. The first time I heard that term, it made me think of something a person would do to soup up the exhaust system on a street rod. What it means is converting information about a library’s collection from the traditional card catalog format to machine readable cataloging records. It’s called “retrospective” because it refers to going back through a library’s entire collection rather than just beginning to computerize library materials purchased after a certain date.

First, we make sure that the library owns all the books we think it does by taking an inventory to compare the holdings list (or “shelf list”) against what is actually on the shelves and out in circulation. Then, we see how many of our books match entries already in the statewide data bank, adding our own special code to the existing computerized list so other libraries will know we have these titles, too. Finally the titles unique to our collection here in Rhinelander are entered into the computer so that others using the data bank will know where to find them. We store the information on floppy discs and mail them in to the state for central processing.

Being involved in the statewide data bank will make inter-library loans more efficient. Did you know that we already plug into a mighty inter-library loan network through our library system? Persons doing research in Rhinelander are able to borrow materials from other libraries around the state and nation, and even other countries. Our borrowers aren’t limited to the collection purchased with local tax dollars that’s housed within the four walls of the Rhinelander District Library.

You don’t have to worry that you will walk through the library doors someday soon and see a computer sitting where the card catalog used to be. A computerized card catalog may be in this library’s future, but not immediately. Another advantage of having our holdings list stored in machine readable form is that we will not have to go through the time and expense of keyboarding in all the book titles all over again should we decide to automate the checkout procedure or card catalog later on.

Meanwhile, the computer will also be used to make some of the daily tasks performed by the librarians easier and more efficient. We are still getting acquainted with our new “partner” and working to overcome the fear of pressing the wrong button and sending everything we have done to data heaven!

October 6, 2011

Those of you who have been hanging around WVLS as long as I have will recognize the “retrospective conversion” as part of the WISCAT project. Rhinelander’s new computer “partner” had been purchased by WVLS with LSCA (now LSTA) funds, enabling us to join the 300 libraries already contributing their holdings to a database that was then being distributed to participants on microfiche. Two years later WISCAT offered holdings from nearly 700 libraries on four searchable CD-ROM discs. It would be another five years before Rhinelander’s library began working toward implementing a stand-alone automated system leading to eventual V-Cat membership.

Check here if you’re curious about WISCAT history. Under the leadership of recently retired RL&LL Director Sally Drew, the project made a tremendous difference throughout the state, particularly for rural and school libraries. WISCAT continues to provide important linkage for libraries unable to afford higher priced alternatives.

Thank you, Steve Jobs, for being our modern Thomas Edison and changing the way we store, share and access knowledge. Librarians are the original search engines; you put some remarkable tools into our hands and gave us the courage to do more than this 1974 library school graduate ever thought possible….back then a "blog" was just a typo begging for whiteout.

Steve Jobs timeline

Steve Jobs quotes

Kris Adams Wendt

New Things Added to WPLC OverDrive Site

The news we have all been waiting for!
Library eBooks now available for Kindle.
Here is a newsrelease from the Wisconsin Public
Library Consortium (WPLC) that you can use and customize.

Kindle newsrelease, posters, flyers and graphics to customize
Here is the direct link to WPLC's Overdrive Kindle site.
There are 4951 available titles. Your customers will see the badge to the left on the Overdrive opening page so they can go directly to all the titles that work on Kindles.
___________________________________________________

In continued efforts to improve the user's experience,  OverDrive has added thousands of  free “eBook Samples” to the catalog for immediate access on reading devices and platforms. Patrons can experience stories immediately on their computer or mobile device and decide if they are right for them, ultimately reducing holds and wait lists.

When available, the word “Sample” will appear below a jacket. Curious customers can easily click and enjoy 10 percent of each title before deciding to check it out or not.

The eBook sample will show up in readers’ bookshelf and look just like a regular eBook download. With thousands of popular and bestselling titles to choose from, eBook samples will reinforce the library as the first stop for discovering and enjoying books, both online and off.

To read more see: http://overdriveblogs.com/library/2011/09/27/ebook-samples-give-customers-instant-access-to-content/

(Monday Memo, October 3, 2011 & WPLC List)