Philadelphia Free Library down

[JSWolf]

Website Down for Maintenance

We apologize, but this website is currently down for maintenance.

Please check back soon.

I think it's not due to maintenance. I think it's due to being overloaded as more and more people get readers and the site is getting hammered.

[PG4003]

Imagine what the wait times are now for books. They were long before.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Website Down for Maintenance

We apologize, but this website is currently down for maintenance.

Please check back soon.

I think it's not due to maintenance. I think it's due to being overloaded as more and more people get readers and the site is getting hammered.

Seems to be up and accessible now. I think you've overestimated the Christmas effect.
______
Dennis

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by PG4003

Imagine what the wait times are now for books. They were long before.

For an eBook that has a maximum of 14-day borrow time, we'll get 26 borrows a year. So if the library has 1 copy and you are #27, you have to wait more then a year to get it. Some libraries allow 2 or 3 days wait time before it goes back into the collection. So given that we can have an extra 2 or 3 days added on, probably more like 25 borrows. And some libraries allow 21 day borrowing for a total of 17 borrows per year.

I think most people stick to the default borrow period and that's whatever the maximum time is. Most do not know that if they borrow ePub or PDF that they can return it once they are done. So it'll just sit there with the unused days being wasted.

However, one thing they also do not realize is that once the eBook is downloaded, it may be on the computer forever. When it's deleted or returned via ADE, it's not actually deleted. All that happens is the expired copy is removed from the list. It's still sitting there in the Digital Editions directory taking up space.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Seems to be up and accessible now. I think you've overestimated the Christmas effect.
______
Dennis

I think not. The site is acting very slow. I'm currently waiting to put an eBook on reserve. It's taking longer to do that then i is type this message.

[abookreader]

Our Overdrive (not Philadelphia) has been mostly down all morning. I've barely been able to get it to work at all since Christmas.

And in other news. I did briefly get on there this morning and saw that sometime in the past day or two about 100 ePub books have been added - and waiting lists are already up to 7 or 8 people on most of them. I only saw one or two books of the new batch that are available for check-out.

[SeaBookGuy]

It's not them, it's Overdrive.

Ours conked out on Saturday afternoon, and was back up yesterday morning in fits and starts. Alert on our library's website yesterday afternoon/evening that they'd notified Overdrive that the patron connections were wonky.

[MaggieScratch]

I tried to search for an audiobook on my library's Overdrive site yesterday and it was slooooooowwwwwww. So yeah, sounds like it's Overdrive in general.

[doreenjoy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I think it's not due to maintenance. I think it's due to being overloaded as more and more people get readers and the site is getting hammered.

My crystal ball broke, but I see yours is working better than ever....

[SeaBookGuy]

But ..... I thought everyone's getting Kindles, which don't handle Overdrive books (except for mobi's,
which require a (non-intuitive) PID#)?

[KarenH]

I did manage to check out a book from Philadelphia today, but it was extremely slow - I would click a button and go do something else for a while. My best guess is that it took at least 30 minutes from the time I initially clicked on the link on the Overdrive search site (that took me to the specific book page on the Philadelphia site) until I had the book checked out and downloaded to ADE. In the interest of full disclosure I will admit that I'm still on a dial-up system, but that whole process would normally take 2-3 minutes at most - generally less. I also tried to log in to 2 other libraries, one was just as slow, and the other I never did manage to log in.

[vulcan_girl]

Overdrive's been wonky since Christmas. None of the libraries I belong to worked that day, and then it came back up around 1am. I haven't been on since then.

I did wonder why all the problems since, as it was stated earlier, everyone got Kindles.

[SeaBookGuy]

It was down as of a couple of minutes ago. I guess these Kindle people are stampeding in for their mobi books (assuming they got ahold of their PID#'s)?

[Ken Irving]

I just checked the New York Public Library, and they don't seem to have a problem. No run on mobipocket, but epub and pdf might be a little more booked than usual - e.g., noticed that Robert Reich's "Aftershock" had a waiting list of 23, which is a little higher than I've seen before, but not unusual. I just checked out another "current events" epub by Ariel Huffington where I started out as 16th in the cue maybe 6 weeks ago. Another title called 13 Bankers had a short list of 2. So at least in the not-so-popular areas where I've been checking things out it doesn't look all that different.

[Marcy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

For an eBook that has a maximum of 14-day borrow time, we'll get 26 borrows a year. So if the library has 1 copy and you are #27, you have to wait more then a year to get it. Some libraries allow 2 or 3 days wait time before it goes back into the collection. So given that we can have an extra 2 or 3 days added on, probably more like 25 borrows. And some libraries allow 21 day borrowing for a total of 17 borrows per year.

I think most people stick to the default borrow period and that's whatever the maximum time is. Most do not know that if they borrow ePub or PDF that they can return it once they are done. So it'll just sit there with the unused days being wasted.

However, one thing they also do not realize is that once the eBook is downloaded, it may be on the computer forever. When it's deleted or returned via ADE, it's not actually deleted. All that happens is the expired copy is removed from the list. It's still sitting there in the Digital Editions directory taking up space.

I find Philadelphia wait times very reasonable. They often buy multiple copies of books and people seem to return books quickly. I was on the waitlist there for a book and was #7 while I was #1 at my local library. I still #1 at my library, but received the book from FLP 4 days ago. So it took less than 21 days, the longest lending period allowed by my library, to go from #7 to getting the book.

I have had similar experiences with most other books I request at FLP. I can't access the library right now to check how many copies they have of that book. However, they are very good about ordering multiple copies of books they thing will be popular. I have received books where I was in the upper teens on the waitlist. I've probably waited a month or two for those books.

One thing this does bring up is the wastage of those multiple copies. For pbooks, once the book is past the new phase and they don't need 10 copies in circulation, my library sells the extras for more income. With the digital books they are stuck having all 10 copies forever.

-Marcy