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eschwartz · 01-28-2016, 11:50 AM

And of course, on the topic of OverDrive's #1 position in providing digital checkout services, libraries can and must roll their own paper collections by definition.
Which you cannot do with ebooks, unless you want to start your own extremely expensive DRM fulfillment platform. (Or lease Adobe's which is still expensive plus is controlled by a corporation that scares me more than OverDrive does.) Then personally negotiate with publishers, storing ebooks you have purchased, building your own ebook library frontend (because I don't know of any libraries that actually wrote their own cataloging software, they usually purchase it from the handful of vendors who write library cataloging software for a living and sell it to hundreds/thousands of libraries), writing an app (and excluding E-Ink) if you went without Adobe...

There is some competition to OverDrive, sort of like there is some competition to Amazon.
But they tend to be inferior, and why on earth do you expect libraries to act against their own best interests, just to assuage your paranoia?

FYI -- libraries are far more obsessed about privacy than you are. It is tied to their job.
And OverDrive has pretty decent privacy policies I think. They have to, as a fundamental part of the business they are in.

According to the EFF (if you are interested in privacy then I am sure you know of them), OverDrive does not keep track of your personal search and lending history: https://www.eff.org/pages/reader-privacy-chart-2012
OverDrive is one of the better names on that list.

01-28-2016, 11:50 AM	#5
eschwartz Ex-Helpdesk Junkie Posts: 19,421 Karma: 85400180 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7 (Wifi only)	And of course, on the topic of OverDrive's #1 position in providing digital checkout services, libraries can and must roll their own paper collections by definition. Which you cannot do with ebooks, unless you want to start your own extremely expensive DRM fulfillment platform. (Or lease Adobe's which is still expensive plus is controlled by a corporation that scares me more than OverDrive does.) Then personally negotiate with publishers, storing ebooks you have purchased, building your own ebook library frontend (because I don't know of any libraries that actually wrote their own cataloging software, they usually purchase it from the handful of vendors who write library cataloging software for a living and sell it to hundreds/thousands of libraries), writing an app (and excluding E-Ink) if you went without Adobe... There is some competition to OverDrive, sort of like there is some competition to Amazon. But they tend to be inferior, and why on earth do you expect libraries to act against their own best interests, just to assuage your paranoia? FYI -- libraries are far more obsessed about privacy than you are. It is tied to their job. And OverDrive has pretty decent privacy policies I think. They have to, as a fundamental part of the business they are in. According to the EFF (if you are interested in privacy then I am sure you know of them), OverDrive does not keep track of your personal search and lending history: https://www.eff.org/pages/reader-privacy-chart-2012 OverDrive is one of the better names on that list. Last edited by eschwartz; 01-28-2016 at 02:14 PM.