Pew survey on how people use ebook services at libraries

[firecat]

http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/06/22/libraries-patrons-and-e-books/

My local library system changes how it offers ebooks and what ebooks it offers approximately every five minutes. I see it's not the only one.

Comments

[libskrat]

Ahahahahaha. There isn't a more vexed issue in the library community just now than ebooks. Half the summer course I'm teaching is about 'em one way or another.

[amadi]

My library system offers ebooks but has them in a separate catalog along with downloadable audiobooks. And by catalog I mean "lists with no apparent sorting, categorization or other mechanism allowing for easy searching." I've never been able to find a book I'm looking for in the ebook listing, because it's just that broken, consequently the number of ebooks I've borrowed is zero. It's frustrating to me.

[libskrat]

OverDrive, you crazy kids.

[amadi]

Yes, that's what it's called. It's awful!

[firecat]

If you think it's awful now, you should have seen it a couple of minutesyears ago.

[amadi]

I'm trying to imagine it being worse. I'm a little scared.

[flarenut]

Every time I go to our local library I promise myself I'll figure out their ebook thing (which I think is overdrive but am not sure.) It used to be able to transfer to PC but not mac; now it can do mac and pc and some tablets/readers but not others, and if you download using one device forget about reading on another, or maybe there's some incantation for that -- so I just head over to feedbooks or smashwords or gutenberg.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I use Overdrive almost exclusively these days. When I first bought my Kindle, I was stuck on free books, some of which were good. The quality of the books I can get from Overdrive is much better. (My library was relatively slow to get Overdrive.)

The library itself doesn't seem to know all the rules and tricks of borrowing books; every time I ask a question, I'm told to just a let a book expire. (Which is a pain--I read 3-5 books/week, so two weeks is a lifetime.) Once I got the hang of returning books through Amazon, I was okay, until I ran into the problem of Overdrive feeling I had returned too many books in too short a period. (That goes away in 24 hours.)

[firecat]

I didn't know you could return books before they expired. Good feature.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

The procedure for returning Kindle books is different from other books, and varies from library to library, so I don't blame my library for not knowing, even though it was vexing.