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My library is primarily funded by our city. However we also get funding from the county library district. Intel is a major source of corporate grants for helping with technology improvements and education services. i just discovered that our local Friends of the Library chapter participates in the Amazon Smile program so maybe I'll keep that in mind while cyber-shopping this holiday season.
I found a recent article in our community paper about our library's technical innovation to improve the user experience. It provides more details about the switch to 3M. I discovered that my city had a two-year contract with Overdrive for their share of the consortium which was not to exceed $200K. This contract just expired. I also found out that there were 3,000 monthly ebook checkouts on Overdrive for my library. Not sure what the 3M contract price is. A few months ago our library switched to the Polaris Integrated Library System as their new catalog tool. The 3M Cloud Library integrates with Polaris such that you see electronic and regular paper checkouts and holds all in the same system. The article also makes the point that 3M gives customers more titles with less wait times. The switch to Polaris was a big factor in their decision.
The county paid for the new Polaris system costs and will pay annual maintenance fees. An Intel grant paid $100K to upgrade our RFID technology and self-checkout equipment at several branches (which is made by 3M). Interesting!
Just because your library has budget to fund Overdrive doesn't mean they can't switch to funding a different system like has apparently happened recently to more than just me.
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