Is this just ebook lending? Is that popular among local libraries?
I thought Kindle/Nook/Apple books/etc completely dominated that market. Reading PDFs on computers/tablets for long form stuff never made much sense to me. I'm curious if local libraries get much traction from their digital libraries.
I could see audiobooks getting locked down being a big hit though. Audible has a monopoly on that harder than ebooks ever experienced.
It is worth noting that Libraries in the UK have to pay authors/publishers to loan out books on a royalty basis with the Public Lending Right payment of course. Even physical books.
My library lends epubs through OverDrive, which puts Adobe's DRM on them. It works quite well with my Kobo Libra H2O. Checkouts of ebooks spiked during the pandemic, with 3 million in 2019, for a county with a total population of ~800K
Sorry, those were two different thoughts. I only have numbers for 2019. I haven't been able to find anything for pandemic years other than general reports that ebook borrowing spiked.
My ten year old uses "Libby" a lot to borrow books from the local library - at one point they started rate limiting him. He also typically has a dozen physical books checked out at any given time.
Yeah, on an iPad. He reads a variety of stuff, but he tells me it's been pokemon themed manga recently. We limit screen time, so he mostly reads print books, but he'll get an hour of bonus libby time in the mornings on school holidays. His fun screen time, 30 min weekdays, 1.5 weekends is typically minecraft or pokemon games.
I also occasionally let him have a little bit of Libby or scratch time (which I deem "educational") before going to school or before bed. (Everything is contingent on behavior.)
Aside from minecraft/pokemon stuff, he typically reads a mix of kids graphic novels and books. Including Tristan Strong, Artimis Fowl, Wings of Fire, Dogman. He's also read Harry Potter, some Terry Pratchett, and Tolkien. He first read the Lord of the Rings in the summer between first and second grade, which blew my mind (it was middle or high school or me). So I don't really worry about stuff like the ratio of graphic novels to textual books.
For my five year old, we have been rate limited on overdrive reading Pete the Cat and Franklin books. Partly because the selection is woeful (about 20 English books) compared to IA's thousands in that category.
If a book exists in overdrive, they allow you to request that your library add it to their collection. My first two requests were added to my library within days, several others came a few months later, and now about 4(?) years later I'm still getting an occasional notification about it, though at this point I've read them already...
I thought Kindle/Nook/Apple books/etc completely dominated that market. Reading PDFs on computers/tablets for long form stuff never made much sense to me. I'm curious if local libraries get much traction from their digital libraries.
I could see audiobooks getting locked down being a big hit though. Audible has a monopoly on that harder than ebooks ever experienced.