On Tuesday morning, at a breakfast meeting in London, I had the opportunity to hear Overdrive’s CEO Steve Potash talk about future developments for Library Partners in the UK. I have to report it was exciting stuff – and no I’m not getting paid by the company to write this post! There were 2 main things which I learnt that I found particularly encouraging.

Overdrive are in the process of streamlining the customer experience
Soon customers will be able to log which e-reader they regularly use and, when loaning an e-book, they will automatically receive the compatible format without first having to choose epub or pdf or kindle formats .

Using new software, developed by Overdrive, customers will be able to read e-books on a desktop browser as well as their mobile device. This will mean they can use library computers to read digital texts. (I’m thinking that although I signed up to enhance our students leisure reading this will be good for independent research in the school library and might have implications for managing e-textbooks too)

Overdrive are using newly collected data for advocacy work with publishers

I was reminded when Steve started talking about “data” how until I was “enlightened” by @briankelly I used to pronounce this word the American way! But, however you say it (like the song says tomato, tomato-potato, potato), data is the key to getting publishers involved in e-book lending. During March 2012 the company surveyed its US library websites to discover that 146 million pages had been viewed by 5 million unique visitors from over 200 countries around the world. On average customers spent 9.5 minutes browsing with the most popular time being 9pm in the evening. There were also 2.6 million reservations made for books that were already on loan! This kind of exposure of book cover images to people who are readers (and potential buyers of e-books) makes a very compelling reason for publishers to participate in Overdrive’s Library Channel. Steve explained that this message was being used in over 150 meetings with publishers during the London Book Fair this week.