Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl
I found out more information on the other city that dropped out of the consortium. They wanted to control their own purchases rather than competing in the consortium. Their residents downloaded 50,000 ebooks annually from the consortium compared to 36,000 for my city. Their process is more transparent. They tell you how many companies competed, what their evaluation criteria and score was, what the different proposal costs were, etc. They decided to select two companies with three-year contracts. What's fascinating is that it says Overdrive will be the primary contractor during Year 1 (2014) and possibly Year 2 due to the timing of the Baker and Taylor new software platform currently in beta testing. Sounds like that city plans to switch to a different, non-Overdrive primary system in the future too!
EDIT: That city currently has about 5,000 ebooks in their independent Overdrive library compared to 70,000 in the consortium and 3,500 in my city's new 3M catalog.
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There is a baker and taylor one coming out. I don't know much about it other than I'm opted into it in Smashwords. I don't think it's up and running yet. They buy books in batches and if I recall how it work (DO NOT QUOTE ME) they BUY a book from smashwords and then OWN it so they can lend it out for life even if I pull my books from smashwords.
For those of you who can do a recommend--can you also see indie titles/request them? Here is how you can tell:
Go to advanced search, and scroll all the way to the bottom and see if there is a selection that reads: "additional titles to recommend."
You can search to see if it works IF you know an indie author who has her books in the overdrive program (you can use mine if in doubt):
Go to advanced search, put in name of indie author, and then down at the bottom click "additional titles to recommend" Clicking "All Titles" DOES NOT WORK. You have to click the "ADDITIONAL titles to recommend."
Here is a library that has the option of searching for "additional titles."
http://kingcounty.libraryreserve.com...en/Default.htm
Most libraries have additional titles TURNED OFF. My library does not have ANY recommendation settings turned on (and had a heck of a time finding the additional titles to do a search to find some of the small press and indie titles when I asked about them.)
This is just for curiosity purposes. If you don't have time to fool with it, don't feel in the least bit obligated. I'm curious about how many libraries have the functions turned on or off.