Big news from OverDrive and Booki.sh, an Australian ebook company, was announced yesterday in a joint press release.  The cloud based platform for distribution, selling, and reading brings OverDrive content a little closer to the end user.  3M also offers cloud based distribution for ebooks. More from the press release: OverDrive, Inc., the leading global [...]

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Big news from an OverDrive Press Release today – they have entered into an exclusive worldwide distribution agreement with Pottermore.  I’m thrilled to see these popular books become available for library lending sans the exclusive agreements.  Here is more from the press release: Pottermore, the online experience and home of the Harry Potter eBooks created by J.K. [...]

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It’s been coming for months.  Today Penguin announced it has ended its relationship with OverDrive.  Starting tomorrow, it will no longer sell e-books and audiobooks to OverDrive for library lending.  Interestingly, ALA and Big Six publishers met last week to discuss library e-book lending.  In an article in paidcontent.org, Laura Hazard Owen points out ALA’s [...]

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Below is a press release from OverDrive regarding 2011 use stats.  Clearly the demand for library eBooks has increased; “doubled” according to the press release.  While I’m thoroughly impressed by the interest and demand in content, I can’t help but focus on 4 of the statistics below. 1.6 billion book/title pages viewed by 99 million [...]

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From an OverDrive press release:  OverDrive (www.overdrive.com), the leading global digital distributor of eBooks and audiobooks to libraries and schools, has added thousands of foreign-language materials in dozens of genres to its broad catalog of more than 700,000 digital titles available across the globe. OverDrive’s online catalog, Content Reserve, which contains digital books in more [...]

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A flurry of blog posts and news articles are appearing related to the Penguin announcement to suspend library lending of titles. Here are a few articles of interest: OverDrive Suspends Access to New Penguin eBook Titles, “Get For Kindle” Access Also Shutdown « INFOdocket Penguin Group USA to No Longer Allow Library Lending of New [...]

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Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy at INFODocket are asking some very important questions about end-user privacy when borrowing OverDrive  library books through a third party vendor site (Amazon). The post asks: Is Amazon collecting download information? Is Amazon saving library download info permanently? If not, how long will they keep it? Is there a retention policy? [...]

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Just received this OverDrive press release in email: In a move highly anticipated since its initial announcement in April, public libraries and schools in the U.S. can now lend eBooks for the Amazon® Kindle.  OverDrive (www.overdrive.com) announced today that it has begun adding Kindle compatibility to all of the U.S. public and school libraries in [...]

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Picked up this news from Nate Hoffelder’s tweet (@thDigitalReader) From the Amazon Press Release (9/21): Amazon.com today announced that Kindle and Kindle app customers can now borrow Kindle books from more than 11,000 local libraries in the United States. When a customer borrows a Kindle library book, they’ll have all of the unique features they [...]

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Good news from OverDrive for those librarians seeking professional development titles in eBook format.  OverDrive announced on Sept. 6th that ALA Editions and Information Today are now publishing partners.  ALA Editions is offering 75 titles, which will likely grow.  No word on the number of Information Today titles. Thanks to INFODocket for tweeting this one. [...]

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