Quote:
Originally Posted by Joykins
Can't find elsewhere?
Well, let's take a backlist paperback novel by a bestselling author before she became a bestseller. This book is not available in a local bookstore, and cannot be special ordered since it is out of print. The library *system* may have a copies floating around in it but since these books are 10-15 years old many have been damaged or lost, and the one branch that has a copy is in the tiny branch 20 miles away. I can go to Amazon and find a used book seller who will sell it to me--with creases and a coffeestain-- for $15.99 plus $3.99 s&h.
Or I can go to overdrive, click it up on my computer, and be reading it within minutes as long as there isn't a hold on it (and there is often is a hold on it, but I've never had to wait more than a few weeks for a book).
Books can be read on ADE so you don't need a reader that handles the DRM unless your eyes can't handle reading on a backlit screen.
(By which I mean to say my local digital library consortium has all Lisa Kleypas's backlist, and I've never seen the complete collection anywhere else. This is actually kind of unusual; it is more usual for the library to have books 3 and 5 of a given series and none other, but if you're ready to read book 3 or 5, it's there).
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Actually, you cannot go to Overdrive to get the eBook. Your library has to go to Overdrive to get it so then you can borrow it.
And the libraries here do have inter-branch loaning. So that item that's in the branch that's 20 miles away will eventually be delivered to the branch of my choice and put on hold for me.