Readers Browsing Library E-Book Catalogs in Drives

Studies continue to show that college students have yet to warm up to e-textbooks.

That’s not necessarily the case for the general reading public, according to the Big Data report released at the London Book Fair by OverDrive. In the study, the distributor of e-books, digital audiobooks, music, and video found that more than five million visitors browsed its catalogs in libraries around the world. The catalogs logged more than 408,000 visits each day, with viewers looking at 11.6 pages for an average of nine minutes, 34 seconds.

According to the study, nighttime is the right time for browsing, with the 8-9 p.m. window the most popular hour, followed by the 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. windows. Nearly half of all e-book readers (49%) did their browsing on Windows computers. Apple iOS devices, such as iPhones and iPads, were a strong second at 28% of users, with Android devices used by just 5% of visitors.

“This report gives a sample overview of the type of data we’re collecting, and we’ll customize future reports to meet the individual needs of our library and publisher partners,” said Michael Lovett, an OverDrive spokesperson. 

Audio e-books DRM free

Overdrive announced this week in a press release that they would be increasing their inventory and capability to distribute mp3 audio books to booksellers and libraries. Borders will be one of the first stores to have this capability added to their repetoire at the concept stores. Overdrive is already an interesting player in the digital content space, perhaps best known for their works with libraries and the IDPF standards group. In this latest announcement it is not the ability to download the content onto the iPod/iPhone, or thousands of other MP3 players that is of interest (although that is interesting). Instead, the most interesting aspect of this press release is their indication that they will allow these downloads without DRM. This is a great move forward, as others have noted the problems and complexity DRM creates in the marketplace. We have seen similar movement in the past few months in the music industry as well. Chalk up one for the consumer!



OverDrive to Distribute MP3 Audiobooks to Booksellers and Libraries
Download audiobooks compatible with iPod, Zune, and thousands of MP3 players