community reading event, there would be a no waiting supply of titles.”
Analytics into action Steve says many gaps in services “are not things that require expense, just analytics” adding that OverDrives’s diversity audits are an “extraordinarily popular service that we have been providing at no cost to institutions who want to know how their catalogues are addressing certain commu- nities of interest.” He adds: “We also create what we call peer reports to see how a library is performing compared to libraries serving similar communities, based on the data. So, we do have the ability to help each library analyse where there might be some easy gaps to consider. I’ll just give you a simple one. The frequency of purchasing new materials has an impact on the success of the library’s collection. I have some very extreme cases in the Asian market where they only buy once a year just because that’s the way the government procures. On the other end we have communities who buy their digital books every day. Who do you think is performing better? Even with the same budget, just breaking it up helps, so that when the same patron comes back every week they see a fresh set of new releases. That has such a material impact because if a patron comes back two three times in the first month and doesn’t see anything new, you may have lost them for years.”
How online is your online? Another factor in the general success of ebooks is the online accessibility of library cards. “What percentage of library services offer a digital library card online?” Steve asks. “That’s becoming standard practice in many markets. If the process of getting a library card requires physically coming in during business hours with a variety of
ID, versus a public library that allows you to complete a few fields of a form online, these are the kinds of differentiators that make a significant material impact. If it’s hard to get a card you’re going to frustrate a lot of potential patrons. And I think it’s another example of why making these comparisons by a territory, against other territories, is problematic because these policies and practices differ.”
Key public librarian skills “Staff training is absolutely essential,” Steve says. “When OverDrive launched our partnership with public libraries, we were also the key technical partner for Water- stones and supplied all the ebooks and audiobooks from WH Smith, so we know from our high street book-selling experi- ence days, it’s that last mile, that point of sale, that counts.
“It’s a problem if library staff are uncom- fortable, unfamiliar, not able to demon- strate and explain how you can browse and borrow ebooks and audiobooks from the public library and enjoy it. Instead, if
that library staff person is like what you see in a lot of the banks now, sitting out front and walking over to each visitor saying ‘let me help you, take out your phone… we’ll install the app …’, that mindset can make a huge impact on community awareness and interest in digital lending.”
Here to help
Because OverDrive sees a bigger picture than most of how libraries across the world are managing and promoting eb- ooks, it can see where they are not being fully leveraged. Steve said: “Ebooks and digital audiobooks are just an underuti- lised resource. There’s a variety of ways that we are helping libraries get the word out, where we are invited or permitted. For example, we have created regional and national reading programmes with a sought-after, bestselling author. These digital book clubs really work, enticing those folks that have yet to experience the convenience and the pleasure of having a book on a screen or in their earbuds.” IP
30 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
June 2022
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