I wish you were able to access HooplaDigital (maybe by finding a branch of NYPL nearby to the one where you're registered and seeing if you can log into it?) In my experience I've found it to be better and more convenient than Overdrive. Per Wikipedia, the content is paid for by participating library systems. (There is a bit of negative buzz about them, though, on the Wikipedia page.
Neither NYPL nor the library I use most partners with Hoopla. But the point I was trying to make was not about my personal access (which is fine -- for now -- since I've located the direct route for contacting acquisitions staff) but about the larger picture and the future of all public libraries.
I've seen some books I want to read on Hoopla, but they are basically useless to me, because you have to read them in the app. I read on my Kindle, and I have zero interest in reading on an app or web browser. This is one of the problems with a lot of alternative services that libraries do offer- everyone's trying to force you onto apps.
I have seen that page, it's kind of irrelevant though. The Kindle Fire isn't really a Kindle, it's a tablet running a variant of the Android OS. I have a Kindle Oasis and it doesn't run any of that stuff. I read primarily in bed holding the Kindle in one hand, a laptop isn't really a practical solution for that.
I also prefer the e-ink experience of my Kindle Paperwhite to any tablet or app option. But don't be fooled -- Amazon is one of the worst data-surveillance offenders and a prime example (if you'll pardon the pun) of vampire capitalism. Your Kindle is collecting all kinds of detailed information about you as you read.
What I really want is a dedicated e-ink device not connected to Amazon in any way which can easily access library ebooks, but because Amazon wants total control of reader data, it's made sure that's not an option.
Nevertheless, when it comes time to replace my Paperwhite, I'm very likely to switch to a Nook e-ink device -- and jump through all the extra technical hoops -- just to thwart Amazon's monopoly a tiny bit.
I use a Kobo linked to Overdrive. E-ink is much easier on the eyes, and linking to librairies is a lifeline for me. Now I’m worried that this will be taken away. Thanks for the warning.
I'm not a fan of Amazon either and I'm definitely concerned about their level of control over the market. I actually looked pretty hard at the time I got my Oasis many years ago for reasonable alternatives. However at that time virtually nobody was putting physical buttons on their e-readers and that is a must have for me- prior to getting the Oasis I'd been using a really old generation Kindle that had physical buttons for a long time because the market just wasn't filling that need. The way I hold my book when I read it's very easy to accidentally touch the screen and change things by accident- the Oasis has a nice solid bevel to make it easier to avoid that.
When my Oasis dies someday, I'll look again at what options exist in the e-ink market- I hear there's better options available these days.
Luckily for me in San Francisco, the San Francisco Public Library system has its own recommendations page and digital catalog, separate from Overdrive, Libby and HooplaDigital. They've been very good about buying books I've suggested over the past ten years, including really niche things like Richard Lupoff's autobiography, WHERE MEMORY HIDES and Matthew Hughes' non-sf historical novel WHAT THE WIND BRINGS, which was written on a grant he got from the Canadian government and won the 2020 Pacific Northwest Endeavor Award.
This strikes me as hyperbole. I'm as satisifed with my local library (and the county and state systems it plugs into) as ever. I only check out ebooks 10% of the time so I can't reliably speak for the Overdrive/LIbby/Hoopla/cloudLibrary experience. I do suspect more of the library's funds are going to ebooks as the number of new physical books seems to be diminishing. But easy access to other collections more than meets my needs such that I've never made recommendations for new purchases.
Libraries, like most institutions, may have future financial pressures and difficulties. But I don't think KKR will ruin the library system we have developed in the US. On the other hand, I can imagine Warner Discovery trashing Turner Classic Movies and I'm taking steps in case it happens.
If you haven't read the article by Cory Doctorow linked at the top of the essay, I do recommend it; it might change your mind. Every single tech platform that has managed a functional monopoly has followed the same cycle.
Physical library books are not at risk (from this, at least), but ebooks and audiobooks are very much so. Even if you personally don't care about digital content, many other people rely on it. And again, the more money libraries have to fork over to OverDrive, the less they have to spend on physical books, staffing to keep libraries open longer hours, and so forth, so you may see the effects there eventually.
Aug 4, 2023·edited Aug 5, 2023Liked by Karawynn Long
Physical library books ARE at risk. They have denuded their stock ostensibly because they can have such a large e-book collection.
The Escondido Public Library's shelves are one-third full. It's embarrassing and depressing. When I asked staff about the situation, they replied, "We have e-books."
Once the e-books are gone, they will have NOTHING.
Wow, that sucks. At the library I worked at, I was very thankful that in our materials budget, digital books took up only about a quarter of the budget. Leaving a lot of room still for physical items. BUT, a big part of that is determined by circulation statistics. For us, the way our budget was cut up was tied directly to what was being checked out. I think the only thing that would change the tides, hopefully, at your local library would be continuing to check out materials, and encouraging friends, family, and others to make a concerted effort to check things out. Consider, also, coming around to a board meeting and making your concerns felt. We were thankful when supportive public came by and let us know what we could do better (as long as they weren't angry, or accusing us of being groomers, that is).
Thank you for that. Unfortunately, it's not exactly my local library--it's about 20 minutes away. They have a fantastic Friends of the Library bookstore, though (and they were just THROWING AWAY first edition science fiction paperbacks from the 50s-70s until they found out I'd take them...)
Nooooo! As someone who is also a fan of 50s-70s SF, that would make me so sad if they were being thrown out! Just shove all of the Robert Silverberg my way, please! haha.
You will probably enjoy my project: https://galacticjourney.org (indeed, you might already have heard of it). I'm currently most of the way through Silverberg's "Nightwings" as we speak. We're on FAPA together.
Also, for hot new releases, Overdrive will sometimes only offer 24 month or 100 checkout ‘purchases’. So you need to buy the exact same content again and again.
VERY interesting piece. As an English professor, friend of librarians, and user of OverDrive and Libby, this was an illuminating and alarming piece. Thank you for sharing it. I'll be sharing it with friends
Bad news: libraries are thoroughly enshittified. Here's a graphic illustrating the history of mergers in the library market (academic and public): https://librarytechnology.org/mergers/
We're well past the precipice. Overdrive's first sin against libraries wasn't selling out to KKR. For years prior they positioned themselves as the hapless middleman - "Sorry, your eaudiobooks licenses are $110 because that's what the publishers want!" They bought licenses from publishers at a wholesale cost and resold at the MSRP, pocketing the savings at the expense of public institutions and their taxpayers. But they have the platform with the DRM (the Overdrive reading app and Libby have Adobe's Digital Editions - absolute dogshit software - baked in) so publishers seemed happy with the arrangement and competition was extremely limited. Overdrive is a classic example of a rent-seeking corporation.
But they're not the only corporation exhibiting parasitism. Clarivate has been on an acquisitions frenzy. They've bought up ProQuest, a company that was on its own acquisition frenzy, and Innovative, effectively gobbling up the majority of integrated-library systems and discovery systems (the software that library catalogues and searches are built on). These corporate systems have seen very little change over the last decade or so but that hasn't kept the companies that sell them from asking for higher subscription fees every year.
We can't let publishers off the hook either. Public libraries deal primarily with the big five. I think it was 2019 - I got a press release from Penguin Random House. They were doing away with their one-copy/one-user ebook license model (basically you buy a license that you own "perpetually" that allows one copy of an ebook to be lent to one patron) in favor of a metered model (where all licenses expire after a period of time or set number of circulations). Allegedly this was to help libraries save money (metered licenses have a lower sticker price) and to make catalogues less cluttered (deleting expired titles can actually be a ton of work). The publisher fuckery was never-ending.
Meanwhile you've got librarians getting paid poverty wages while trying to shoulder the burden of being one of the last public spaces in North America people can access without being charged. It's not a great time to be a librarian in a public library.
That's an edifying, if painful, graphic. Thanks for the link and the information about Clarivate; I'll add it to the addenda I'm compiling for the next newsletter.
It sounds like you're a librarian? Public, academic, private?
And I'm all too well aware that major corporate publishers are a big part of the problem. <sigh> Capitalism, if not muzzled by law and regulation, eats everything in sight.
I worked in public libraries for about ten years (5-ish as a paraprofessional doing frontlines service, 5-ish as a digital literacy librarian). Now I work in an academic library (collections librarian). Very different institutions with some overlap in problems.
omg, the prices are ridiculous. I was in charge of collection development and I always hated having to spend like $80 on some new Danielle Steel audiobook that was capped at like 26 checkouts. Always felt like a giant waste of resources (cause it was, lol)
It's too bad that an open source ebook lending server that libraries could host themselves and tie in with their existing user management systems probably isn't something publishers or ereader manufacturers would get on board with.
I was in charge of the entire materials purchasing for a pretty large public library up until 3 months ago. I agree, Overdrive is pretty sucky, and only got worse during my time there. Which is why my library, right before I left, put in our notice to terminate our ongoing contract with them, which was enacted in the Fall of 2011. Now, thankfully the price never changed over that time period (it was a whopping 9k a year, which took up almost half of the budget for our 'digital library' budget, used for purchasing electronic e/audiobooks). But, the recent years of constant changes and feeling like we weren't quite getting the bang for our buck was a big part of it.
Over a year ago we had started a contract with Bibliotheca for their service cloudLibrary, which basically does the same thing. But, is way better, and the contract is cheaper. But, they were also going through a few changes before I left that made me feel a bit sour. As the underdog, though, I'm rooting for them. And, actually, know of a ton of libraries that are switching over to them (and, from the purchasing side of things, I could def tell that Overdrive is getting nervous; let me tell ya, they were NOT happy when we pulled a bunch of our resources out and switched them over to Cloudlibrary)
So, one of the great things about Overdrive was that you can opt into a Consortium. In fact, that's essentially what a third of the contractual spending was on: being connected to the Consortium and taking part in Overdrive's digital infrastructure (using their website, blah blah blah). The other 6k was basically a purchasing obligation. We set aside 6k to spend *in the Consortium* per year. This way, we are benefitting all of the members, because the titles bought through a specific Consortium version of the Marketplace website were open for all of the libraries. Alternatively, we could buy separately through the Advantage marketplace website. Those titles were earmarked *only* for our patrons. But, the money could not come out of the 6k. This was the arrangement for decade or so we were connected to them.
Now, let me say something that disagrees with the other librarians, and perhaps yourself. I found the Recommendations to be a nightmare. I detested that feature. That *may* be because of how our library was set up. *I* was in charge of purchasing ALL LIBRARY MATERIALS. DVDs, BluRays, Physical Audiobooks, games, tablets, and 70k dollars worth of books (in every genre available). There, then, was a lot to do. On top of that, getting *literally hundreds* of seemingly random recommendations from patrons, with no easy way to collect and sort them to see, for instance, what particular item was getting a lot of requests, was overwhelming. Seriously, it was common to get close to $10k
worth of recommendations in the span of a few weeks because people would literally spam the recommendation button.
On top of this... well, a lot of the public probably doesn't really understand exactly *how fucking expensive* ebooks and audiobooks are through these platforms, nor the fact that when I *purchase* them, 9 times out of 10 the set up it actually *to rent them*. Either for a set number of checkouts (maybe for simultaneous, but usually not), or checkouts for set period of time. So, ok, I end up spending on 1 *hot new book* $110 to have it for a year, or alternatively like 26 checkouts. And, at the same time use up a fairly significant chunk of my sub-budget. Now, some titles (depending on the publisher, and probably other contract stuff) do have it where you can (allegedly) have access to a title in perpetuity. But, that was not the most common arrangement.
So, for me it was a nightmare. You know what I think if far more preferable? The option you mentioned having to go with: filling out a form on the actual library's website, which goes to a real live librarian (someone in collection dev/acquisitions) who can then make the decision, and who you have been informed is actually seeing it. Why that works for me? Because *we had rules in place for suggestions*. A patron was limited to 2 suggestions per month. And, of course, it was up to the discretion of the collection development librarian/associate, who is abiding by the collection policies of the library. And, if the suggestion is rejected, the patron is told. If it is accepted, the material is put on hold for them. A much better way of handling suggestions, imo. Perhaps an even better way would be if Overdrive or Cloudlibrary or whoever had settings so that the librarians could cap suggestions numbers per patron. That way people wouldn't spam it.
But, yeah, Overdrive sucks, lol. And, they are doing their best to become a monopoly in the library world, buying up other services like Kanopy..... Hope they fail bigtime!
My library somehow managed (until the feature removal) to have a limit in place through OverDrive where each patron was only allowed to recommend X titles during a period of Y weeks. If I tried to exceed that, OD would give me an error message that I'd exceeded my recommendation limit and tell me to wait. So there must have been some way for libraries to set that functionality up ... prior to May. Now, of course, that no longer exists.
Anything to break OverDrive's functional monopoly would be better than nothing, but it is more than possible to have a duopoly or even three or four major players and still run afoul of capitalist enshittification. The book Chokepoint Capitalism has a number of such examples. I would rather root for the non-profit Palace, run by career librarians, than Bibliotheca or any for-profit corporation.
On the subject of the ebook expense and licensing versus purchasing ... yes, it's a terrible gouge, from both the publishers and the platforms. I'm writing a small followup piece which gives more data about that, but I'll link back to your comment as well.
Aug 5, 2023·edited Aug 5, 2023Liked by Karawynn Long
Do you think this is connected at all to the recent conservative push to gut libraries? I mean, money is certainly one of the primary drivers behind Overdrive's acquisition. But since fucking people over is the Republican _modus operandi_, it would make complete sense to me if (1) KKR was friends with and/or mostly composed of Republicans, and (2) they saw the acquisition of Overdrive as one stone with which they could kill the two birds of making money and gutting libraries. This is just a hypothesis without any kind of firm basis, but it seems horribly plausible to me.
It's possible, albeit not necessary -- I think the engine of unconstrained capitalism is sufficient all by itself to produce this effect without additional political or 'moral' motivation.
Of course, I do believe that the ultimate (as opposed to proximate) motivation for cutting library funding, banning books, etc. is not to promote any concept of morality but to sustain and intensify the kind of winner-take-all capitalistic system currently in place, so ... one way or another, I guess my answer is 'yes'.
I'm glad I checked through the comments before posting another similar link, but yeah, I came here to signal the same thing. Because it's possible that it's just vampire capitalists being vampires, but it's also possible they're trying to do something shittier, if that's at all possible.
I have Libby from my public library and my academic library. Recommending a purchase is still active with my academic library, but not the public library.
I wish you were able to access HooplaDigital (maybe by finding a branch of NYPL nearby to the one where you're registered and seeing if you can log into it?) In my experience I've found it to be better and more convenient than Overdrive. Per Wikipedia, the content is paid for by participating library systems. (There is a bit of negative buzz about them, though, on the Wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoopla_(digital_media_service)#:~:text=Hoopla%20(stylized%20as%20hoopla)%20is,its%20collection%20of%20digital%20media.&text=Hoopla%20Digital%20is%20a%20division%20of%20Midwest%20Tape )
Neither NYPL nor the library I use most partners with Hoopla. But the point I was trying to make was not about my personal access (which is fine -- for now -- since I've located the direct route for contacting acquisitions staff) but about the larger picture and the future of all public libraries.
I've seen some books I want to read on Hoopla, but they are basically useless to me, because you have to read them in the app. I read on my Kindle, and I have zero interest in reading on an app or web browser. This is one of the problems with a lot of alternative services that libraries do offer- everyone's trying to force you onto apps.
FWIW: https://www.epubor.com/how-to-read-hoopla-books-on-kindle.html (only works on Kindle Fire). There's a comparison of the features of Hoopla vs. Overdrive down near the bottom of the page. Me, I'm OK with reading in a browser tab on my laptop.
I have seen that page, it's kind of irrelevant though. The Kindle Fire isn't really a Kindle, it's a tablet running a variant of the Android OS. I have a Kindle Oasis and it doesn't run any of that stuff. I read primarily in bed holding the Kindle in one hand, a laptop isn't really a practical solution for that.
I also prefer the e-ink experience of my Kindle Paperwhite to any tablet or app option. But don't be fooled -- Amazon is one of the worst data-surveillance offenders and a prime example (if you'll pardon the pun) of vampire capitalism. Your Kindle is collecting all kinds of detailed information about you as you read.
What I really want is a dedicated e-ink device not connected to Amazon in any way which can easily access library ebooks, but because Amazon wants total control of reader data, it's made sure that's not an option.
Nevertheless, when it comes time to replace my Paperwhite, I'm very likely to switch to a Nook e-ink device -- and jump through all the extra technical hoops -- just to thwart Amazon's monopoly a tiny bit.
I use a Kobo linked to Overdrive. E-ink is much easier on the eyes, and linking to librairies is a lifeline for me. Now I’m worried that this will be taken away. Thanks for the warning.
I'm not a fan of Amazon either and I'm definitely concerned about their level of control over the market. I actually looked pretty hard at the time I got my Oasis many years ago for reasonable alternatives. However at that time virtually nobody was putting physical buttons on their e-readers and that is a must have for me- prior to getting the Oasis I'd been using a really old generation Kindle that had physical buttons for a long time because the market just wasn't filling that need. The way I hold my book when I read it's very easy to accidentally touch the screen and change things by accident- the Oasis has a nice solid bevel to make it easier to avoid that.
When my Oasis dies someday, I'll look again at what options exist in the e-ink market- I hear there's better options available these days.
This is an excellent takedown of KKR and Overdrive. I've just shared it to a couple of progressive and corporate accountability listservs.
KKR and the other buyers lost about a billion dollars in the Toys R Us bankruptcy. Yeah, they got a half billion out, but they put 1.5 billion in.
Is that covering the entire tenure of their ownership? Do you have a source for that?
See below.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2017/09/19/the-big-investment-firms-that-lost-1-3-billion-on-the-toys-r-us-bankruptcy/
Luckily for me in San Francisco, the San Francisco Public Library system has its own recommendations page and digital catalog, separate from Overdrive, Libby and HooplaDigital. They've been very good about buying books I've suggested over the past ten years, including really niche things like Richard Lupoff's autobiography, WHERE MEMORY HIDES and Matthew Hughes' non-sf historical novel WHAT THE WIND BRINGS, which was written on a grant he got from the Canadian government and won the 2020 Pacific Northwest Endeavor Award.
This strikes me as hyperbole. I'm as satisifed with my local library (and the county and state systems it plugs into) as ever. I only check out ebooks 10% of the time so I can't reliably speak for the Overdrive/LIbby/Hoopla/cloudLibrary experience. I do suspect more of the library's funds are going to ebooks as the number of new physical books seems to be diminishing. But easy access to other collections more than meets my needs such that I've never made recommendations for new purchases.
Libraries, like most institutions, may have future financial pressures and difficulties. But I don't think KKR will ruin the library system we have developed in the US. On the other hand, I can imagine Warner Discovery trashing Turner Classic Movies and I'm taking steps in case it happens.
If you haven't read the article by Cory Doctorow linked at the top of the essay, I do recommend it; it might change your mind. Every single tech platform that has managed a functional monopoly has followed the same cycle.
Physical library books are not at risk (from this, at least), but ebooks and audiobooks are very much so. Even if you personally don't care about digital content, many other people rely on it. And again, the more money libraries have to fork over to OverDrive, the less they have to spend on physical books, staffing to keep libraries open longer hours, and so forth, so you may see the effects there eventually.
Physical library books ARE at risk. They have denuded their stock ostensibly because they can have such a large e-book collection.
The Escondido Public Library's shelves are one-third full. It's embarrassing and depressing. When I asked staff about the situation, they replied, "We have e-books."
Once the e-books are gone, they will have NOTHING.
Wow, that sucks. At the library I worked at, I was very thankful that in our materials budget, digital books took up only about a quarter of the budget. Leaving a lot of room still for physical items. BUT, a big part of that is determined by circulation statistics. For us, the way our budget was cut up was tied directly to what was being checked out. I think the only thing that would change the tides, hopefully, at your local library would be continuing to check out materials, and encouraging friends, family, and others to make a concerted effort to check things out. Consider, also, coming around to a board meeting and making your concerns felt. We were thankful when supportive public came by and let us know what we could do better (as long as they weren't angry, or accusing us of being groomers, that is).
Thank you for that. Unfortunately, it's not exactly my local library--it's about 20 minutes away. They have a fantastic Friends of the Library bookstore, though (and they were just THROWING AWAY first edition science fiction paperbacks from the 50s-70s until they found out I'd take them...)
Nooooo! As someone who is also a fan of 50s-70s SF, that would make me so sad if they were being thrown out! Just shove all of the Robert Silverberg my way, please! haha.
Hahaha.
You will probably enjoy my project: https://galacticjourney.org (indeed, you might already have heard of it). I'm currently most of the way through Silverberg's "Nightwings" as we speak. We're on FAPA together.
Also, for hot new releases, Overdrive will sometimes only offer 24 month or 100 checkout ‘purchases’. So you need to buy the exact same content again and again.
Great piece, thank you. I run an independent publishing company, and I had wondered what happened to Overdrive's recommendation feature.
VERY interesting piece. As an English professor, friend of librarians, and user of OverDrive and Libby, this was an illuminating and alarming piece. Thank you for sharing it. I'll be sharing it with friends
Bad news: libraries are thoroughly enshittified. Here's a graphic illustrating the history of mergers in the library market (academic and public): https://librarytechnology.org/mergers/
We're well past the precipice. Overdrive's first sin against libraries wasn't selling out to KKR. For years prior they positioned themselves as the hapless middleman - "Sorry, your eaudiobooks licenses are $110 because that's what the publishers want!" They bought licenses from publishers at a wholesale cost and resold at the MSRP, pocketing the savings at the expense of public institutions and their taxpayers. But they have the platform with the DRM (the Overdrive reading app and Libby have Adobe's Digital Editions - absolute dogshit software - baked in) so publishers seemed happy with the arrangement and competition was extremely limited. Overdrive is a classic example of a rent-seeking corporation.
But they're not the only corporation exhibiting parasitism. Clarivate has been on an acquisitions frenzy. They've bought up ProQuest, a company that was on its own acquisition frenzy, and Innovative, effectively gobbling up the majority of integrated-library systems and discovery systems (the software that library catalogues and searches are built on). These corporate systems have seen very little change over the last decade or so but that hasn't kept the companies that sell them from asking for higher subscription fees every year.
We can't let publishers off the hook either. Public libraries deal primarily with the big five. I think it was 2019 - I got a press release from Penguin Random House. They were doing away with their one-copy/one-user ebook license model (basically you buy a license that you own "perpetually" that allows one copy of an ebook to be lent to one patron) in favor of a metered model (where all licenses expire after a period of time or set number of circulations). Allegedly this was to help libraries save money (metered licenses have a lower sticker price) and to make catalogues less cluttered (deleting expired titles can actually be a ton of work). The publisher fuckery was never-ending.
Meanwhile you've got librarians getting paid poverty wages while trying to shoulder the burden of being one of the last public spaces in North America people can access without being charged. It's not a great time to be a librarian in a public library.
That's an edifying, if painful, graphic. Thanks for the link and the information about Clarivate; I'll add it to the addenda I'm compiling for the next newsletter.
It sounds like you're a librarian? Public, academic, private?
And I'm all too well aware that major corporate publishers are a big part of the problem. <sigh> Capitalism, if not muzzled by law and regulation, eats everything in sight.
I worked in public libraries for about ten years (5-ish as a paraprofessional doing frontlines service, 5-ish as a digital literacy librarian). Now I work in an academic library (collections librarian). Very different institutions with some overlap in problems.
omg, the prices are ridiculous. I was in charge of collection development and I always hated having to spend like $80 on some new Danielle Steel audiobook that was capped at like 26 checkouts. Always felt like a giant waste of resources (cause it was, lol)
“As a hyperlexic child, I read the way other people breathed — constantly if allowed, desperately if thwarted.”
I feel like we might be soul siblings.
It's too bad that an open source ebook lending server that libraries could host themselves and tie in with their existing user management systems probably isn't something publishers or ereader manufacturers would get on board with.
Interesting take. Thanks K.
Should we consider copyright a platform?
I'm ... not sure I understand your question. Can you elaborate?
I was in charge of the entire materials purchasing for a pretty large public library up until 3 months ago. I agree, Overdrive is pretty sucky, and only got worse during my time there. Which is why my library, right before I left, put in our notice to terminate our ongoing contract with them, which was enacted in the Fall of 2011. Now, thankfully the price never changed over that time period (it was a whopping 9k a year, which took up almost half of the budget for our 'digital library' budget, used for purchasing electronic e/audiobooks). But, the recent years of constant changes and feeling like we weren't quite getting the bang for our buck was a big part of it.
Over a year ago we had started a contract with Bibliotheca for their service cloudLibrary, which basically does the same thing. But, is way better, and the contract is cheaper. But, they were also going through a few changes before I left that made me feel a bit sour. As the underdog, though, I'm rooting for them. And, actually, know of a ton of libraries that are switching over to them (and, from the purchasing side of things, I could def tell that Overdrive is getting nervous; let me tell ya, they were NOT happy when we pulled a bunch of our resources out and switched them over to Cloudlibrary)
So, one of the great things about Overdrive was that you can opt into a Consortium. In fact, that's essentially what a third of the contractual spending was on: being connected to the Consortium and taking part in Overdrive's digital infrastructure (using their website, blah blah blah). The other 6k was basically a purchasing obligation. We set aside 6k to spend *in the Consortium* per year. This way, we are benefitting all of the members, because the titles bought through a specific Consortium version of the Marketplace website were open for all of the libraries. Alternatively, we could buy separately through the Advantage marketplace website. Those titles were earmarked *only* for our patrons. But, the money could not come out of the 6k. This was the arrangement for decade or so we were connected to them.
Now, let me say something that disagrees with the other librarians, and perhaps yourself. I found the Recommendations to be a nightmare. I detested that feature. That *may* be because of how our library was set up. *I* was in charge of purchasing ALL LIBRARY MATERIALS. DVDs, BluRays, Physical Audiobooks, games, tablets, and 70k dollars worth of books (in every genre available). There, then, was a lot to do. On top of that, getting *literally hundreds* of seemingly random recommendations from patrons, with no easy way to collect and sort them to see, for instance, what particular item was getting a lot of requests, was overwhelming. Seriously, it was common to get close to $10k
worth of recommendations in the span of a few weeks because people would literally spam the recommendation button.
On top of this... well, a lot of the public probably doesn't really understand exactly *how fucking expensive* ebooks and audiobooks are through these platforms, nor the fact that when I *purchase* them, 9 times out of 10 the set up it actually *to rent them*. Either for a set number of checkouts (maybe for simultaneous, but usually not), or checkouts for set period of time. So, ok, I end up spending on 1 *hot new book* $110 to have it for a year, or alternatively like 26 checkouts. And, at the same time use up a fairly significant chunk of my sub-budget. Now, some titles (depending on the publisher, and probably other contract stuff) do have it where you can (allegedly) have access to a title in perpetuity. But, that was not the most common arrangement.
So, for me it was a nightmare. You know what I think if far more preferable? The option you mentioned having to go with: filling out a form on the actual library's website, which goes to a real live librarian (someone in collection dev/acquisitions) who can then make the decision, and who you have been informed is actually seeing it. Why that works for me? Because *we had rules in place for suggestions*. A patron was limited to 2 suggestions per month. And, of course, it was up to the discretion of the collection development librarian/associate, who is abiding by the collection policies of the library. And, if the suggestion is rejected, the patron is told. If it is accepted, the material is put on hold for them. A much better way of handling suggestions, imo. Perhaps an even better way would be if Overdrive or Cloudlibrary or whoever had settings so that the librarians could cap suggestions numbers per patron. That way people wouldn't spam it.
But, yeah, Overdrive sucks, lol. And, they are doing their best to become a monopoly in the library world, buying up other services like Kanopy..... Hope they fail bigtime!
My library somehow managed (until the feature removal) to have a limit in place through OverDrive where each patron was only allowed to recommend X titles during a period of Y weeks. If I tried to exceed that, OD would give me an error message that I'd exceeded my recommendation limit and tell me to wait. So there must have been some way for libraries to set that functionality up ... prior to May. Now, of course, that no longer exists.
Anything to break OverDrive's functional monopoly would be better than nothing, but it is more than possible to have a duopoly or even three or four major players and still run afoul of capitalist enshittification. The book Chokepoint Capitalism has a number of such examples. I would rather root for the non-profit Palace, run by career librarians, than Bibliotheca or any for-profit corporation.
On the subject of the ebook expense and licensing versus purchasing ... yes, it's a terrible gouge, from both the publishers and the platforms. I'm writing a small followup piece which gives more data about that, but I'll link back to your comment as well.
Shocking and gutting. Who dreams up such poisonous schemes? Can they not make a living doing something that doesn't enshittify the world?
Do you think this is connected at all to the recent conservative push to gut libraries? I mean, money is certainly one of the primary drivers behind Overdrive's acquisition. But since fucking people over is the Republican _modus operandi_, it would make complete sense to me if (1) KKR was friends with and/or mostly composed of Republicans, and (2) they saw the acquisition of Overdrive as one stone with which they could kill the two birds of making money and gutting libraries. This is just a hypothesis without any kind of firm basis, but it seems horribly plausible to me.
It's possible, albeit not necessary -- I think the engine of unconstrained capitalism is sufficient all by itself to produce this effect without additional political or 'moral' motivation.
Of course, I do believe that the ultimate (as opposed to proximate) motivation for cutting library funding, banning books, etc. is not to promote any concept of morality but to sustain and intensify the kind of winner-take-all capitalistic system currently in place, so ... one way or another, I guess my answer is 'yes'.
Great article. Saw this in the news today. KKR in talks to buy major publisher. Hmmm:
Deal for Simon & Schuster Said to Be Near
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/industry-deals/article/92915-deal-for-simon-schuster-said-to-be-near.html
I'm glad I checked through the comments before posting another similar link, but yeah, I came here to signal the same thing. Because it's possible that it's just vampire capitalists being vampires, but it's also possible they're trying to do something shittier, if that's at all possible.
Yeah, I saw that over the weekend and included it in the addendum I published this morning. Ugh.
I have Libby from my public library and my academic library. Recommending a purchase is still active with my academic library, but not the public library.