Overdrive

I think the idea of digital books and audiobooks is a good one, but I find that most customers would still rather have the physical book or CD. Customers don't want to be tied to their computers to read or listen and they don't want to spend the money to buy CDs for the burnable titles.

I think the idea of databases like Overdrive and Netlibrary is a good one, and I think maybe in a few more years they might start to take off, but as a person working in a small branch library, I'm not seeing it happen now. I would however, be interested in statistics on how Overdrive and Netlibrary are being used. Since customers only need to come into the library to register and can, from then on, use their home computers without coming into the library, perhaps a lot more use is being made of these resources than those of us in the front line in the libraries are aware of.

That said, the overdrive interface was easy to use, and I liked that I could browse by subject, even though the number of titles in this database is still fairly light. We haven't had Overdrive for very long, so we can't expect to have a huge number of titles. Plus, I can see how our collection development team may not want to spend a lot of money buying titles that may not get very much use compared to their physical counterparts.

I'm glad that Overdrive was one of the "things" covered, since I don't get asked about this database very often, and it was good to spend a little while going over the database so that it will be fresh in my memory the next time someone is interested in e-books or e-audiobooks.