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Originally Posted by Hamlet53
Good to scrap that second suggestion. All sorts of problems with it.
As far as trying to put the nominations and vote a month early I'm not sure that would accomplish much. Are there many people who would need two months to read a book and are willing to devote that entire period to reading just that one book? Better that consideration of book length be given in nominating and voting for a book. I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich many years ago, sometime in the period of junior high to high school. That's so long ago that I could not really hope to participate with any serious analysis of that particular book without reading it again. Not really inclined to do that since it is on a subject that is so well known, unlike most of the other potential selections mentioned so far. It would not get my vote for sure.
As far and price and availability issues raised. Well for one thing I would mention that even when an ebook is very pricey or is difficult to get almost any book is still available in paper. And likely available though ones library system. Or at a used book store. For over 400 years printed books served people well. However, if one must have the book as an ebook, and that at a reasonable price, than both considerations should be considered in ones voting.
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The problem is that a large enough book cannot realistically be nominated because it would take too long to read. If enough people thought it would not be too long to read given a month leeway is up to them. But I do think a month leeway might get more people involved especially if they could get the book via Overdrive. The time we have between the voting and the discussion is not always enough to get the eBook from Overdrive.
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As far as observations about Overdrive .. . . I agree with much of what you said. I disliked the switch to auto- checkout, though that can be disabled at the time of placing a hold. I like to be informed by email when the book becomes available. I will check it out right away. Sometimes I put books on hold on speculation. For example the books nominated for October. I placed holds on all those that were available to me through Overdrive on first nomination. As soon as the final book was selected I just canceled all those other holds. With the automatic checkout option if I had forgotten to do that I might have needlessly tied up a book for the standard checkout period at some later point.
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I don't like auto-checkout because it means that people can be lazy and not have to go to the library to check it out. It's done for them. So if someone is unable to deal with the book in 2-3 days, it will be there waiting. Whereas before, it would move on to the next person in line. I know you can turn off auto-checkout, but most people will not do that. They'll keep the default options which are 3-weeks (for libraries that allow 3-weeks) and auto-checkout. That will make for a longer wait time.