Overdrive is often regarded as the largest digital distribution partner that powers the public libraries audiobook and ebook collections. The company also deals with school libraries and to a lesser degree law firms. There was recommended collections for these other segments, on the same backend that libraries had access to. This has all changed with the advent of Overdrive Professional, a new division.
OverDrive Professional, supplements corporate, academic and law libraries. With this launch, students, knowledge workers and researchers can now benefit from Libby, the award-winning reading app. Libby allows users to easily access their libraries’ ebooks and audiobooks to support their academic and professional development objectives.
The catalog contains a wide variety of titles in all subjects, including career and professional development, course materials, industry-specific topics, leadership, IT, marketing, language learning and more. Prominent publishers include Springer Science + Business Media BVM, Wiley, HarperCollins, Taylor & Francis, Princeton University Press, University of Chicago Press, Cengage and O’Reilly Media (academic only) along with thousands of others. Notable authors include Simon Sinek, Brene Brown and Malcolm Gladwell.
Book industry veteran Steve Rosato was named to lead OverDrive Professional. “We’ve been serving college and corporate knowledge centers and libraries for as much as a decade,” said Rosato. “Librarians report that working with OverDrive has resulted in higher use of their library services and a strong ROI measured by better student outcomes for academic libraries and improved organizational performance for corporate and law libraries.”
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.