Overdrive on a Kobo

[John F]

Is there a way to see available library ebooks on the reader?

My mother is an avid reader, and I am having troubles keeping up with her; I put the ebooks on her reader. I was hoping she could learn to use Overdrive on her reader (a Forma, up to date firmware).

I setup the Overdrive account, but the UI looks to rudimentary to be functional for her needs. Our library doesn't get a lot new copies, so there is always a long wait for newish titles. Ideally, she would need a way to view available titles. I don't see any way to filter available titles?

Ideally, a UI similar to the Overdrive site: filter by genre, ebooks, available, ...

Thank you.

[JSWolf]

If your mother has a smartphone, one thing you can do is use the Libby app to notify her when eBooks are available and soon to expire.

If she has a tablet or computer, use that to browse and borrow and use the Kobo to download.

[Parsley]

You can search by genre in the Kobo overdrive interface. Just search for "fantasy" or whatever instead of the author or title in the search bar. My library also sets up a rotating set of collections of recommended books of different sorts, which is very nice for browsing.

The UI will also only show ebooks which the Kobo can fulfill for you (which is not exactly the same thing as Libby's "epubs" category, but is useful if you don't want to mess around with download & transfer). I don't know any way to explicitly filter by availability, unfortunately, but "most popular" seems to bias the top of the list towards available books.

[John F]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If your mother has a smartphone, one thing you can do is use the Libby app to notify her when eBooks are available and soon to expire.

If she has a tablet or computer, use that to browse and borrow and use the Kobo to download.

I asked about on the reader.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by John F

I asked about on the reader.

It doesn't look like there's any way to filter by availability on the Kobo. The best I could do was filter by new books and work my way down, looking for books that said "Borrow" instead of "Place on Hold."

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by John F

Is there a way to see available library ebooks on the reader?

My mother is an avid reader, and I am having troubles keeping up with her; I put the ebooks on her reader. I was hoping she could learn to use Overdrive on her reader (a Forma, up to date firmware).

I setup the Overdrive account, but the UI looks to rudimentary to be functional for her needs. Our library doesn't get a lot new copies, so there is always a long wait for newish titles. Ideally, she would need a way to view available titles. I don't see any way to filter available titles?

Ideally, a UI similar to the Overdrive site: filter by genre, ebooks, available, ...

Thank you.

The scarcity of ebooks at the local library gets worse the more urban your area because demand increases. Unlike with paper books which can last for years, ebooks have a built in expiration date forced by the publishers, so libraries have to spend ebook money rebuying the best sellers to meet demand. That doesn’t leave much money for less popular titles, so there’s always a wait.

As for Overdrive on the Kobo, I’m afraid the others are correct. There is no way to filter for availability. It’s a shocking shortcoming, which is why we highly recommend Libby. That will filter for availability and genre and many others. You could search for the books for her using Libby on your phone. Anything you borrow using the app would instantly sync to her Kobo (except for the rare Kindle only book.)

Your mother might have to resign herself to flipping through OD’s curated lists on the Kobo. At least they clearly mark available titles with “borrow”. I wish I had better news for you.

[Quoth]

Yes, it's annoying when you discover a series but not sure you'd like it enough to buy and book1 (or even 1 & 2) is gone. My Librarian apologised and said it's the publisher.