Library Technology Guides

The lending of e-books continues to be an activity of critical interest in public libraries. As e-books gain ever wider popularity by the general public, libraries have been steadily working out the many problems related to offering e-book services similar to those offered for print materials. As e-book content increases relative to libraries' other collection components and services, libraries increasingly want more integration into their existing strategic patron interfaces and management systems rather than treating e-books as an isolated service.

Collaboration between Polaris and 3M has resulted in a full integration of e-book lending within the PowerPAC or MobilePAC patron interface of the Polaris Library Management System. This integration enables patrons of libraries using the Polaris automation systems to search and access e-books using the same interfaces offered for other library materials.

BiblioCommons announced in January 2012 a major initiative to integrate e-book lending into its socially-oriented library discovery platform.

Until now, OverDrive has delivered its service through its own hosted platform, taking advantage of the limited capabilities of established protocols such as SIP2, Remote Patron Authentication, to integrate its services into third-party applications. In response to the increasing demand for interoperability and integration, OverDrive has announced its plans to deliver a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) to allow the developers of other related products, typically integrated library systems, online catalogs, mobile app developers, or discovery interfaces, to incorporate OverDrive's e-book discovery, lending, and management functionality. These APIs will be available to libraries that partner with OverDrive and to approved third-party vendors.

OverDrive announced in March 2012 that it had acquired the Australia-based company Booki.sh, a portfolio project of Inventive Labs, a small consulting and software development firm founded by Joseph Pearson and Virginia Murdoch. Following the acquisition of Booki.sh, the remaining consulting business will combine with Icelab, another Web consulting firm.