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1. #HOW DO I OPEN THE LIBBY APP LICENSE#
2. #HOW DO I OPEN THE LIBBY APP DOWNLOAD#

They love that more people are reading digital books. The librarians I spoke with celebrate Libby. Librarians sometimes pay hundreds of dollars to circulate one copy of an e-book for a two-year period, a number that could theoretically add up to thousands for one book over decades, according to a 2019 American Library Association report to Congress. Just like with movies, music and software, book publishers have moved from an ownership model to a subscription model for their digital products (none of the major publishing houses responded to multiple requests for comment for this story).

#HOW DO I OPEN THE LIBBY APP LICENSE#

Rather than emulate the physical model, where libraries pay a fixed cost for a certain number of books, they instead offer digital editions through a license that usually includes a limit on the number of times a book can be checked out, the length of time a library holds an edition, or both. Though it may seem counterintuitive to readers, e-books cost far more than physical books for libraries, meaning that increased demand for digital editions put libraries in a financial bind.īecause e-books are not regulated under the same laws that govern physical books, publishers can price them however they choose. Public library budgets have never been luxe, and book acquisition budgets in particular have always been tight. It had also accelerated a funding crisis. E-book checkout growth and new users on Overdrive both increased more than 50%. Libby downloads increased three times their usual amount beginning in late March. You could use more than one library card.

#HOW DO I OPEN THE LIBBY APP DOWNLOAD#

You could download library books to Kindle. You could access the web app anywhere on any computer, and everything synced to a phone app as well. People turned to digital books and were delighted to discover they were so much simpler than remembered. It was the public library's best-kept secret.Īnd then in March 2020, when libraries closed their doors and books sat gathering dust, the Libby app became so much more than a cute reading tool. Libby became a cult favorite for book lovers and dedicated librarygoers, and almost every public library in the country, already dependent on Overdrive for their growing digital collections, loved that they could make reading online a little bit easier. But the app's seamless, user-friendly experience was so exceptional that it spoke for itself. Libraries are never very good at selling themselves, and neither is Overdrive. Overdrive hit just under 200 million checkouts in 2016 in 2020, that number more than doubled, surpassing 430 million.įew noticed when the cute, friendly virtual library app launched in 2017. Overdrive - the digital marketplace for publishers and libraries, and the creator of Libby - was (and still is) clunky, slow and unintuitive. Not many people even knew their libraries offered digital books. In 2016, just over a quarter of Americans had read an e-book within the previous year, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Public librarians depend on Libby, but they also worry that its newfound popularity could seriously strain their budgets.īefore 2017, e-books were still pretty niche, and checking out library e-books was torture. A user-friendly reading app becomes popular during the pandemic, making books cool again for young readers, multiplying e-book circulation and saving public libraries from sudden obsolescence.īut the Libby story is also a parable for how the best-intentioned people can build a beloved technological tool and accidentally create a financial crisis for those who need the tech most. On the surface, there couldn't be a more wholesome story than the meteoric rise of the Libby app.