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More to enjoy — with help from our partner libraries!

tablet showing a picture of a bookcase full of books/ordinateur avec un image d'un etagere plein des livres

Jun 28, 2021

Five Ontario libraries are sharing their eCollections and expanding selection for your reading and listening enjoyment! Burlington, Hamilton, London, Mississauga and Ottawa Public Libraries are partnering in a resource-sharing endeavor to bring you more.  

With your Ottawa Public Library card, you now have access to Overdrive’s eBooks and eAudiobooks from these participating libraries. While you should always start your search in OPL’s Overdrive collection, if the title you are looking for is not there, you may borrow and place holds on titles in the other libraries’ Overdrive collections. OPL customer holds on OPL titles will go to OPL customers first, just as holds for the other library customers will be filled first by their own library 

Check it out for yourself!  

Find the other collections on OPL’s Overdrive page under Partner Libraries and browse their holdings. Or if you’re using Libby, tap on the Libby icon at the bottom of the screen. Under Your Libraries select Add a Library and you’ll see all the participating libraries.  

Explore Overdrive eBooks & Audiobooks, or visit More to Borrow on Overdrivefor more information. 

Have fun exploring collections from other Ontario libraries! 

Comments

Fabulous!

I see a few ebooks I want to read that OPL doesn't have but other libraries do. Awesome!

Awesome but...

That's really awesome to have even more choice, however I don't manage to make it work with my eReader (Kobo). On Liby, I can see my books from all libraries, but my Kobo doesn't get the ebooks from partner libraries :/ And I don't manage to make it work either using Adobe Digital Edition (DRM issue).

Re: Awesome but...

Thanks for letting us know about that issue, Angélique. We've shared this with the Content Services team, and they are looking into it for you. We'll get back to you as soon as there's more information.

Re: Awesome but...

Hello again Angélique, our colleagues in Content Services say to make sure you are logged in to the Library carrying the title you've borrowed, i.e. if you have something checked out from Hamilton's collection, whether from the website or Libby, log in to the Hamilton Public Library on your Kobo to download the title. Checkouts seem to only sync within each library's collection, but all downloaded titles show up in the same books tab, regardless of which library you're signed in to. Please let us know if this helps or if there are other issues.

Federated search

This is really great news, but it would be much easier for people to find books they're looking for if you could search across collections. Right now, you need to go to each library's Overdrive site and search from there. Instead, patrons should have an option to search from the OPL Overdrive site and see results from all 5 libraries. This could be set as default or be an option in the Advanced Search. That being said, what would be even better would be for digital titles from partner libraries to appear in the catalogue, so patrons could search all available resources (print and digital) in one place. It would also let people put those books on their shelves, rate and review them, or add them to lists. I did a list to highlight titles now available from partners, and it was a lot of work to find the BiblioCommons item numbers for all the titles and get the links for the digital titles on Overdrive from the partner sites. And I wouldn't have even needed to make a list if the titles were easily discoverable.

Federated search work around

I only just found out about the partner libraries. My solution for the lack of a federated search was to add these partner libraries to my "Library Extensions" configuration. If you haven't checked out the "Library Extensions" browser extension it might be worth a look. This browser extension will show library availability for any book on the web page you are currently viewing. For instance, with the extension installed whenever I'm browsing Good Reads, Amazon, Book award lists etc. the extension shows me that books availability at any of the libraries I've configured. Information for "Library Extension" can be found at https://www.libraryextension.com

Re: Federated search

Thanks for your enthusiasm and interest in our library partnership through Overdrive. It's a relatively new service from the platform, and early in its development. Each of the 5 libraries does its own selection and purchasing based on local interests. The intent is for each library to first provide for their own customers, followed by resource sharing titles that are available. It's much like a digital version of interlibrary loans in that, if a title isn't in our collection, you have the opportunity to borrow it from other library systems, should they have it. It's meant to add to our collection, not become it. There needs to be the distinction between libraries to prioritize OPL material for our own customers, and other libraries do the same. We hope you continue to find value in this new offering!