This is kind of a good news/bad news story. The good news is that Hachette is going to be offering its full catalog to libraries, including new releases. No windowing! The other piece of good news is that the books won't expire, unlike library books from HarperCollins, Penguin and Macmillan. I really like the no-expiration part. I always fee a bit guilty when I check out a HarperCollins book, start it and realize I don't like it. There went one of the 26 lends... The bad news is the pricing, although it's not all bad news, considering that the books won't expire. The...

I vaguely remember seeing a few blog posts and photo-heavy features here and there in months past about tiny, DIY libraries. It always seemed to me like the sort of thing you might expect to see in one of those weird BuzzFeed roundups: 12 Oddball Book Lovers Who've Built Tiny Libraries On the Side of the Road, or something like that. But according to the last edition of O'Reilly Media's TOC Today newsletter (which you really, really should subscribe to if you don't already get it), tiny libraries are now a 'thing.' That is, a trend—or to be more specific, a quickly growing...

You may have already seen that Penguin is going to stop the windowing of library book titles. That's a good thing, and I applaud the decision. I'd be more excited if my library was part of the 3M system, and if Penguin wasn't having books "expire" and require a repurchase every year, but some library books is better than none, I guess. What's going to be interesting to watch is how the merger of Random and Penguin handle library books. Right now the two companies have completely different policies and pricing, and Random House is in Overdrive, where Penguin isn't. We'll keep...

At the end of January, I wrote an article on the Overdrive overhaul, and how users weren't completely happy with the new interface. To follow up on that, I decided to try the Overdrive Media Console app and see how it fares as an e-reading app. My verdict? I want to like it. I really do. But I can't quite warm up to it. Why do I want to like it so much? Because it's an easy way to get library books on my Nexus 7. The more I use the Android Kindle app, the less I like it, so EPUB is a...

Those who take the subway in New York City know it can be tedious and crowded at times, and lively and energetic at others. During the long evening-time commute home, the subway can be dreadfully boring; it can also be downright entertaining. Reading, of course, is a common pastime on the train, with e-readers and physical books in the hands of many straphangers. A group of students from Miami Ad School has an idea to help pass the time and get readers involved with local libraries, according to a post on Buzzfeed. Underground Library is a proposed project for the NYC subway...

The story of Joanna Cabot's DRM-free year continues with the dispatch below, from FEB 2013. JAN | FEB | MAR | APR | MAY | JUN | JUL | AUG | SEP | OCT | NOV | DEC It's been a busy month for me, work-wise, so I haven't had that much reading time—I logged just five books this month, which is pathetic. But this doesn't reflect my daily reading. I have a few longer-term books I'm reading (a book of daily essays, some reference books) which should bump my total when they're done, but that won't be for some time. I...

Another day, another unusually quirky story from the public library space. Today's story comes from the far-off and seemingly magical outpost of Ljubljana, the capital city of Slovenia. And yes, this story does happen to be about 13 months old—the earliest online reference we found carried a January 2012 deadline. But because it doesn't seem to have attracted much press attention when it first broke, and because it does such a good job of illustrating the joy of surprise and discovery that libraries offer, we figured it wouldn't hurt to bring it to your attention. See the packages in the photo on...

Is it just us, or does it seem as if there's an unusually large number of quirky library stories floating around lately? Thanks in no small part to the digital revolution, many municipal libraries today are watching their budgets shrinks at they same time they find themselves having to defend against accusations of irrelevance. But there is an upside to the pressure so many libraries are experiencing these days: entrepreneurial creativity. After all, when it begins to look as if your very business model may be facing extinction, new and oftentimes unusual ideas tend to begin sprouting like so many weeds. Case in...

  Impelsys, a provider of electronic content delivery solutions, recently announced the commercial launch of a new acquisitions system for libraries that enables library staff to order e-books for their collections directly from participating publishers. Impelsys' new library eBook Ordering System, as it's called, was developed in partnership with Douglas County Libraries (DCL), a seven-branch public library system in Douglas County, Colo. The e-book acquisition dashboard was beta tested by DCL's professional staff and system modifications were made prior to commercial launch last week. "The Library E-Book Ordering System is an important addition to the 21st century librarian's toolchest," said James LaRue, director of Douglas...

  British crime and thriller writers are being bumped off by their American counterparts, according to the latest league table of the Most Borrowed Adult Fiction Titles in UK libraries, released today by Public Lending Right on the eve of the UK's National Libraries Day. No less than 17 novels by U.S.-based crime and thriller writers appear in the Top 20 Most Borrowed Adult Fiction Titles list. Nine of them were written—or co-written—by James Patterson, including the Most Borrowed Title of 2011-12, 10th Anniversary. For the sixth year running, James Patterson also retains his crown as the UK’s Most Borrowed Author. In total, 10 U.S.-based authors writing in the...

I didn't even realize the Christian Science Monitor had its own literary/books blog. I stumbled upon it yesterday (it's called Chapter & Verse), and like the rest of the paper, it's wonderful. A post that went live two days ago caught my attention; it's about a so-called "Business Model Scorecard" that was recently released by the American Library Association, and it "asks library staff members to rate e-book offerings from publishers on factors like availability," according to the article. From the post: "The scorecards grade criteria from one to five and include 15 questions. Questions range from the price publishers are charging libraries for...

Late last year, OverDrive began rolling out a new look to their site. My own library in Fairfax County had a "New Look Coming" banner up for several weeks. When I tried it out for the first time, my reaction was, "Not great, but I can live with it." I wasn't crazy about the new thumbnail view of the catalog. Maybe it's just me, but I find it easiest to process information in lists, not in blocks of images. I also missed the feature that told me exactly where I was in the hold line. The old site would tell me,...