By Adam Sockel, OverDrive’s Social Media Specialist

OverDrive’s Local Content tool is a great way to enhance the value of your digital collection by offering unique historical documents, titles written by local authors and community videos your library has copyright permission to upload. Schools can even upload student-created short stories to share with the school community. You can set the number of copies available with each Local Content title and you can even make a curated collection of locally created content to feature.

Local Content is the perfect way to make your digital library a unique part of your community and let your users be a part of not only your collection development but the collection itself! Here is a simple guide to getting started with OverDrive Local Content:

1. Make sure your Marketplace account has “Local content” permissions, which will enable access to the Local Content section of Marketplace. If it doesn’t, reach out to your library or school’s Marketplace administrator. (Note that the Local content section of Marketplace isn’t available for Advantage accounts.)
2. Login to OverDrive Marketplace.
3. Choose Local Content from the Admin drop-down menu.
4. Select Add a title from the Local Content homepage.
5. Select Audiobook, eBook, or Video to continue.
6. Select the format(s) for your title, which will appear as the title’s “available formats” on your public-facing site. The supported formats are:
• For audiobooks: MP3
• For eBooks: Adobe EPUB (and OverDrive Read), Open EPUB (and OverDrive Read), Adobe PDF, Open PDF
• For video: Streaming video
7. For eBooks, upload your eBook file directly. For audiobooks and videos, contact your Account Specialist for instructions on how to provide the files.
8. Select Continue.
9. Upload cover images (optional).
10. Enter your title’s metadata and set a date for the title to be made available on your public-facing site (“Ready for lending date”).
11. When you’re done, click “Set live once all files are processed.”

Be sure to reference the Marketplace User Guide for more detailed instructions. You can find it on the Support tab in Marketplace.