Overdrive Redesign

[piper28]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

I misunderstood the flags. The red flag means the book is available for checkout. I see that at my library, almost no books are available for checkout right away!

EDIT: I think I still don't understand the flag colors.

eP

From what I could see looking at the Brooklyn site, the flags under the thumbnail are probably related to your wishlist? The grey flag seems to be a link you can click on to add to the wishlist. I don't know if there's a colored one that shows when the book is on your wishlist?

Also, to tell availability of the book, you can look at the little triangle in the upper right that has the book image in it (or headphones for audio). If the symbol is light grey, the book isn't available. If it's dark, then the book is available. So at least there's a pretty quick way of telling looking at it.

However, definitely don't like that when you look at the listing of books, because of the way they show the title now it's often cut off because there simply isn't enough space. And often the covers aren't all that helpful for figuring out what the title is.

While the old site wasn't anything that was going to win awards (and had a number of issues), I definitely wouldn't say the new one is really any improvement over it.

[DianNC]

It's (Brooklyn) a bit of a mess today. Book covers (30 to 40%) aren't showing, title info is wrong on some books, books aren't listed in order of 'date added', etc.

I imagine they'll work out the glitches in due time. I also think it's only a matter of time before this pilot system is applied to most (if not all) of our public libraries throughout the country.

[xendula]

^ I fear the same. It would be great if they allowed users to select between new look and classic look, but I could not find any indication of this on the two redesigned sites I saw.
Wouldn't it be great if at least one Overdrive employee were a MR member?

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by DianNC

I've only just looked at it, but it reminds me a bit of Windows 8 -- more steps to accomplish what was previously a one-click task.

For instance - browsing my wish list last night, I could instantly see the titles that were available now and those that required a hold. This new design requires that I click on each book separately to get the current status and then use the back-button to see each of the others.

I know I'll get used to it, but to answer your question, I liked the old, more efficient site better.

My library changed to the new look today. I hate it too! With the old wish list, it was possible to see immediately which books were available for checkout, and also possible to remove a book from the list.

I'm going to look for a place on the site to contact overdrive and complain - let me know if anybody finds it....

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

I'm going to look for a place on the site to contact overdrive and complain - let me know if anybody finds it....

I don't know where to complain, but here is the web page explaining why they consider this an improvement:

http://overdrive.com/Next-Gen/library/

[DianNC]

They're located in Ohio.
(216) 573-6886

[JD Gumby]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

I don't know where to complain, but here is the web page explaining why they consider this an improvement:

http://overdrive.com/Next-Gen/library/

From the sounds of things, they're going to be like Google's YouTube updates to worse and worse pages & layouts and never admit their designers are absolutely in the wrong and make sure that as few people can contact them with complaints as possible... :/

[DianNC]

^Well, if the Mayans are right, we only have a couple more weeks to worry about it.

[Joykins]

It would be nice if someone optimized it for speed, filtering, sorting, searching--you know, useful things like that. If they put THAT in, I would mind the large number of page loads to get to useful information...slightly less.

Thumbnails of book covers are pretty but not very useful, especially since at best they tend to telegraph genre rather than content.

[4691mls]

I found a link for contacting the local library for support, so I sent them an email asking if they had an address to complain to Overdrive. Maybe if the local libraries get a lot of complaints, they will report to Overdrive.

I hate thumbnail view. I want list view back. I want to be able to see a brief description of the book. If the book is part of a series, I want to be able to see "John Doe series, book 3".

I want the wish list page the way it was before, so from the wish list page I could easily remove a book from the wish list, request a hold, or add the book to my bookbag.
While browsing for books, I want the links that allow me to quickly access my hold requests, wish lists, bookbag, and items on loan.

I want to have "add to bookbag" as an option, not just a one-click "borrow" button. There have been times when I added books to the bookbag, then found another book I'd rather have, and removed something from the bookbag without checking it out. I liked that capability.

Furthermore, in order to use the updated Overdrive site, I had to install some Google Crome add-on. After that, I kept getting errors when I tried to post this. I finally made the connection and disabled the add-on, then I was able to make this post. I guess I will have to enable to enable/disable the addon every time I visit the library now.

[dandelioncottage]

They are also on Twitter: @OverDriveInc

Originally Posted by DianNC

They're located in Ohio.
(216) 573-6886

[mycurlylocks]

Whoa! That is so stupid. All the steps you have to take to even look at a book. With all the extra filtering required, the server has to be slowing down.

Thankfully I don't have membership in a test library, but once mine does, I'll be hitting up twitter and Facebook both. Hmm... Maybe I should start on twitter now, just to complain and state that libraries shouldn't be forced to convert.

[xendula]

We should all contact them. Thank goodness Fairfax, Philly and RI still have the old look. God knows for how long.

[Atunah]

That is horrible. My eyes aren't the best as it is and I can't read the titles on most of those covers. And the text underneath is cut off so I have to guess what book it is. . Then also a lot of the covers are squished down into a ugly square or blurry. I was getting dizzy trying to look at what new books had been added. This is on the Brooklyn library. My local one hasn't switched yet.

Its utterly useless for me for browsing in this state.

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

With the old wish list, it was possible to see immediately which books were available for checkout, and also possible to remove a book from the list.

I did find there are two ways to remove books from the list. If you're in your Wish List, click on the red ribbon - it'll ask you to verify that you want to remove the book from the list.

Otherwise, you can also click on the book. And (I'm going on memory here) there's either a button or link or something similar that says "remove book from Wishlist". (Obviously, I don't bother with the extra steps of clicking on the book to go to another page to remove it, so I don't have this one memorized. )