OverDrive has announced integration with Project Gutenberg. Boston Public Library is the first to add this featured collection of more than 15,000 EPUB eBook titles to its website. There’s no authentication needed to access these eBooks, and the eBook titles don’t expire or count against a user’s checkout limit when they download.
OverDrive plans to expand this service to additional libraries in the US and UK and is looking towards further international expansion in the future.
On the technical end, OverDrive’s Digital Library Blog says: … every EPUB eBook downloaded from the Project Gutenberg collection will count as a circulation even though a user doesn’t need to sign in to access the titles. We’ll have separate reporting functionality built into the Content Reserve admin portal so you can check your Project Gutenberg stats.
Those darned folks at Overdrive. They’ve spent a decade (at least) not screwing up much and not sucking. Now they’re giving away something that’s free anyway, that makes their library customers look good to their bosses, and is a nice convenience to the end user.
I’m starting to think they may be smart.
Tentatively,
Jack Tingle
Marvelous! With many public libraries scrambling to keep up basic services, being able to supply copies of public domain books at virtually no cost will be a big help.
This also points out just how woefully inadequate even the latest version of Amazon’s Kindle remains, since it won’t read EPUB or cooperate with libraries for checkouts. It’s fine if you just buy books from Amazon, but of little value if most of your reading comes from libraries.
I must be missing something here. These books are already free and available for download via Gutenberg. Why does an ereader owner need Overdrive- another layer and system to get these books? Just log onto to Project Gutenberg (or some of its offspring like Manybooks.net) and get the books. It’s easier than working with Overdrive.
And what why the lament about Amazon and ePub? These books are ALL available in kindle format. No need for ePub.
Again, I muist be missing something.
Richard, you’re overestimating the ebook knowledge of the average person. While WE all know about PG and to go there for public domain books the average person doesn’t. Supplying the books through Overdrive means that the patrons will find them for free, something that I don’t think is happening now.