LibraryTechtonics

The OverDrive rep, whose name I didn’t catch, is totally charismatic.

Think of it as a branch of your library, it will become a new branch of your library. 11p-midnight: #1 reported circ hour at NYPL, and NYPL is reporting more digital downloads than actual IRL (in real life) circs.

You can transfer chunks to your MP3 player, which means that cheaper players with less space and still keep their music on there. As an added bonus, 85-90% books are burnable to CD, which is something they negotiated carefully with publishers, and a nice perk. Also, most (not all) of the movies in the collection come with public performance rights, so you can show them at your library.

OverDirve is a Virtual Coke Machine, put anything you want in it: ebooks, audiobooks, any author, any genres, any *publisher*, local original content (historical, community, author talks). The BPL is working on putting music from local bands in their OverDrive collection, and other libraries are doing similar stuff. Also, the content varies from fiction, nonfiction, how-to, foreign language, For Dummies books, Nolo content, and more. Ooooo, the foreign language enhanced downloads include not only the audio of the language book, but also .pdf worksheets to do the exercises along with the audio. Too hot. Games are currently in beta.

A shared collection is in the queue (just worked out by OverDrive in the last week), so that member libraries can share collection content locally *and* nationally, like a WorldCat of actual national content. Hot!

He now extols the benefits of the OverDrive interface. It is spiffy, I say sooth, because I’ve used it. The usability of the OverDrive application interface is nifty, as is the fact that OverDrive has its own site and checkout system. They offer MARC records for the catalog, which “aren’t as robust as the NetLibrary records,” according to our presenter, but really, it may not need to be to serve patrons. Simple is good, as long as it works.

Image Entertainments: good option for getting started with downloadable video, because they have good options and packages.

For a library network, the best bet is to go in as a group, because it’s cost prohibitive to do an individual subscription for a small library. When you go in as a consortium, you must agree to a common set of rules, like borrowing periods, maximum checkouts, etc. Also, buying needs to be worked out on a network level, since you can buy multiple copies of a book (it’s a one-book-one-patron-one-checkout system), and as our presenter says, “Everyone does it differently.”

In his experience, people *love* to see book jackets. One library added 4 book cover shots on their OverDrive home page where there were previously none, and their audiobook circs doubled. Then, they went to 8 book jackets, and the circs doubled again. This kept happening until they left off with 35 book jackets on their OverDrive home page, and the patrons love it. They love the pictures, they love the visuals, and they *love* the guidance (recommended reads, staff picks, what’s hot now).

It takes about 10-12 weeks to get an OverDrive system customized, loaded, up and running (about 6 weeks to an opening day collection, which can be imported from a list with little effort). Then, there’s content reserve training on the administrative interface, and there are a few weeks where the system is released only the the librarians for some usability-ish tested, then it goes public.

OverDrive also doesn’t work with the iPod (Apple, btw, hasn’t been at any ALA conference for a while… so much for embracing the library eaudiobook market ::sigh::). However, if I understand this guy, you can burn a burnable file to a CD then rip it to the right file format. I could be wrong, he’s a bit hard to follow, and there are a lot of questions flying around.

Leasing and managing The Coke Vending Machine (server space, configured system, etc.) is $1,000/month. Then, you buy stuff to stoke your Coke Machine. I believe content can be purchased at a decent discount, with percentages varying from publisher to publisher (15-60% off, if I remember the slide right).

Tags: technology