But the app's seamless, user-friendly experience was so exceptional that it spoke for itself. Libraries are never very good at selling themselves, and neither is Overdrive. Overdrive hit just under 200 million checkouts in 2016 in 2020, that number more than doubled, surpassing 430 million.įew noticed when the cute, friendly virtual library app launched in 2017. Overdrive - the digital marketplace for publishers and libraries, and the creator of Libby - was (and still is) clunky, slow and unintuitive. Not many people even knew their libraries offered digital books. In 2016, just over a quarter of Americans had read an e-book within the previous year, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Public librarians depend on Libby, but they also worry that its newfound popularity could seriously strain their budgets.īefore 2017, e-books were still pretty niche, and checking out library e-books was torture. A user-friendly reading app becomes popular during the pandemic, making books cool again for young readers, multiplying e-book circulation and saving public libraries from sudden obsolescence.īut the Libby story is also a parable for how the best-intentioned people can build a beloved technological tool and accidentally create a financial crisis for those who need the tech most. On the surface, there couldn't be a more wholesome story than the meteoric rise of the Libby app.

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