Do you want to make the most of your library card? Follow this series of articles that will provide an overview of information on the various digital resources and databases the La Porte County Public Library offers the community. This is the seventh in a series and will review the OverDrive downloadable eBook and eAudiobook service.
OverDrive
OverDrive offers a wide range of eBooks and eAudiobooks in all genres. The OverDrive App is best for use with Kindles and Nook readers. Libby is the App recommended for Android, Apple iOS, and Windows devices.
LPCPL has offered downloadable titles from OverDrive for many years. Beginning in January of 2020, OverDrive titles are available for hold placement and checkout right from the Library catalog.
2019 Usage Numbers
There were 77,788 checkouts of downloadable materials from 26,547 available eBook copies (52,594 checkouts or 68% of circulation) and 4,125 available eAudiobook copies (25,194 checkouts).
There were 15,760 unique users added which was an 19% increase from the previous year.
Adults were the heaviest user type with 80% of the activity, followed by Students at 18%, Youth at 1.3%, and other groups like Outreach and Starter accounts making up about 1%.
Users accessed titles from the main collection 53%, via Libby 41%, from the Kids and Teens pages 5%, and from Verso redirects only 1%.
When looking at lending models used, materials with One Copy/One User lending accounted for 63% of checkouts. Next was Metered access titles with 36% of circulation. Titles lent through Simultaneous Use circulated 1% of the time. Specifically, for Simultaneous Use titles, Big Library Read events sparked 97 checkouts; Project Gutenberg titles had 402 checkouts; and the Libraries Transform event gathered 37 checkouts.
The title with the highest number of checkouts was Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens at 253 checkouts.
2020 Usage Numbers
There were 78,266 checkouts of downloadable materials from 30,734 available eBook copies (52,774 checkouts or 67% of circulation) and 4,616 available eAudiobook copies (25,492 checkouts).
There were 15,754 unique users added which was a .04% decrease from the previous year.
Adults were the heaviest user type with 87% of the activity, followed by Students at 10%, Youth at 2%, and other groups like Outreach and Starter accounts making up about .5%. Online Borrower accounts did make up 1% of users. One has to keep in mind that Online Borrowers are a temporary account before being upgraded to a more fixed account like Adult or Youth Unlimited. There were 577 checkouts made by Online Borrowers within the term that their account was set as such.
Users accessed titles from the main collection 42%, via Libby 51%, from the Kids and Teens pages 3%, and from LS2 PAC redirects about 4%. The changes in how users accessed the OverDrive collection were partly driven by the pandemic (seen in the switch in main collection and Libby from 2019) and partly from how the new library management system made available in January 2020 allowed users to place holds and checkouts from the PAC (noted with the API increase in 2020). There were also 5 checkouts made from the Sora app which is designed for school users.
When looking at lending models used, materials with One Copy/One User lending accounted for 55% of checkouts. Next was Metered access titles with 41% of circulation. Titles lent through Simultaneous Use circulated 2% of the time. Specifically, for Simultaneous Use titles, Big Library Read events sparked 146 checkouts; Project Gutenberg titles had 1,628 checkouts; and the Libraries Transform event gathered 22 checkouts. The Library added a Cost-per-Circ lending model to be used with online book clubs and talks. Circulation for these titles do reach 1% of the total checkouts. Lastly, there were six checkouts of local content, in the form of comic books and a few titles on the presidential impeachment.
The title with the highest number of checkouts was once again Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens at 321 checkouts.
Next week we will focus on Mango Languages.
