Despite the interview yesterday with Bilbary‘s Tim Coates on what libraries in the UK must do in order to keep their doors open, US libraries continue to adapt to a business model that helps libraries be more than just a location to pick up dusty books. In order to meet the growing needs of a more technologically-minded culture, libraries are stepping forward and offering their patrons ebooks, live streaming of audiobooks and video, and more.
OverDrive, a leading distributor of digital content to libraries for patron use, announced today that the 22,000 libraries and schools it partners with generated nearly three billion views of catalog page content in its database of over one million titles among the 192 million registered user logins last year.
“As a result of the continued expansion of OverDrive’s library service platform and the addition of over 300,000 titles, including Harry Potter and other bestsellers, digital libraries saw record traffic last year,” said Shannon Lichty, OverDrive’s Manager of Library Partner Services, in a press release. “For decades, readers have turned to the library to discover new books, and OverDrive’s new responsive library platform is based on web-centric open standards to carry that tradition to the next generation of readers.”
OverDrive will be at the upcoming ALA Midwinter meeting later this month to demonstrate more of this key information in connection with its Next Generation Library platform.
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.
