In the March 5th, 2023, edition of the Journal-News, the publisher announced that they would no longer publish a print edition of the paper beginning May 6th. As things currently stand, the ePaper edition is available without a login on the journal-news.com website. If you go to login option in the upper right corner of …
OverDrive has announced that at the end of April 2023, they are shutting down the OverDrive app and requiring all users to use the Libby app. The OverDrive app has already been removed from the app stores (except Amazon’s), but for those who still have it installed on their devices, it will stop connecting to …
This fall we are ending the Lucky Day Book and Lucky Day DVD programs. Summer Reading this year was our last attempt to see if patron usage/interest would recover for both formats. Unfortunately they did not. Managers are guiding the phasing out per each location’s individual needs. The LD Book program was started almost 9 …
On Sunday, November 13th, the Ohio Digital Library passed the 7 million checkout mark for the year. You can view real-time checkouts and holds here. As of yesterday, Lane’s checkouts are at 213,403. We are on track to surpass our 2021 total of 222,154.
Hold redelivery is coming to the Ohio Digital Library (OverDrive), likely between February and April. The recent update to Libby that includes push notifications is meant to help alert you about holds as a part of this new feature. From our State Library Rep: What is hold redelivery? The downside of automatic checkouts is that …
Hold Redelivery Coming Soon to the Ohio Digital Library Read More »
Using a hypothetical Thanksgiving dinner in which the invitees include Macmillan CEO John Sargent, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Eric Klinenberg, retired librarian Sari Feldman shares details such as the following to help explain the value of libraries: At my former library, the Cuyahoga County Public Library, in Ohio, we recently calculated the value of …
Columbus Metropolitan Library, in partnership with 18 other libraries in the Digital Downloads Collaboration, was the first in Ohio to join the boycott. Here’s a list of libraries/systems boycotting Macmillan eBooks. Publisher’s Weekly released an update on the situation in the most recent edition of The Week in Libraries: November 8, 2019: It’s now been …
UPDATE: Libraries & Elected Officials Responding to Macmillan’s Embargo Read More »
A forthcoming update to the Ohio Digital Library explained by our fantastic State Library rep:
There are some changes coming to automatic checkout in the near future. Currently, patrons can decide if they want titles on hold to be checked out when they are available without the patron having to manually check it out. Unfortunately as some patrons discover, multiple holds seem to come in at once. I’m firmly in this camp because I had 5 holds come in last week when I didn’t have time to read any of them!
Coming soon, OverDrive will give patrons the choice to either check out the available hold immediately, or to suspend their hold temporarily. The patron should have 72 hours to make the decision after they receive the notification email. If it is not a good time for them to read the title, a patron can suspend it, be put back on the hold list in the first position, and the title will be released to the next person waiting. Then, when the title is available for the initial patron, they are able to decide again if they want to suspend it again. If the patron doesn’t make a decision after the initial notification email they will be given a “courtesy bump” that will automatically move them to the first position in the hold line and release the title to the next person waiting. This courtesy bump will only occur once. If the patron doesn’t make a selection after the second notification email, their hold will be cancelled and they would need to put themselves back on the hold list.
Speaking of suspending holds, most library ILSs are able to “freeze” or place “vacation holds” on physical items but were you aware that you can suspend holds in ODL? Here is a link to the tutorial, https://help.overdrive.com/en-us/1022.htm#thundercontent Many patrons are already using suspended holds to ensure holds don’t come in for them when they don’t have time to read them. Only once they are ready, do they unsuspend the hold. Personally, I try to suspend most of my holds so I only have a few titles checked out at any one time. But sometimes I forget and have multiple holds available at the same time!
This change to automatic checkouts is supposed to roll out sometime in October or November, but there is not a clear date for it yet. Just something to keep in mind and I’ll let you know when I learn more!
Last weekend the Ohio Digital Library passed 2 million checkouts. On the same weekend last year we were at 1.6 million. Kindle remains the most popular format of eBooks.
The hold lists are almost non-existent. Visit RBdigital here to sign up through the website. Download the RBdigital app from Google Play or the App Store and begin checking out these and other titles:
