By: Shannon Carroll, OverDrive Account Specialist 

eReading Rooms are additional curated locations available on your OverDrive platform that show content that share a certain theme, age level or format.  Most commonly, our partners utilize Kids and Teens rooms, which limit content based on audience level, to provide a targeted destination for our younger customers.

With the launch of our new OverDrive website interface, eReading Rooms now have more expansive options than ever before.  In addition to rooms filtered by audience or format, we can create Subject and Language rooms, as well as other custom rooms that can serve various purposes. The new OverDrive websites have enabled us to get creative with our Rooms and are offering these new options thanks to some great partner feedback. Indianapolis Public Library was looking for a solution to highlight their foreign language content in their OverDrive collection, and with the creation of Language rooms we were able to help them accomplish their goal.

eReading rooms Chinese

“Language rooms offer a seamless experience, both in terms of content and the languages OverDrive offers” said Simon Miller, OverDrive’s new interface Product Owner.  “If your device is set to Spanish, and you go to your Spanish room, you see Spanish navigation making everything seamless for the user with no additional clicks needed.”

Setting up an eReading Room has its advantages over simply creating a collection, as they can provide a good location to offer a broad subject where patrons can dive in deeper. The collections within a room can be customized with auto-generated lists, and existing or specifically created curated lists. The Kids eReading rooms also provide parents peace of mind when putting a child on the website as they’ll only see age-appropriate content.

Simon went on to say that “libraries have no doubt many deep areas in their collections that a subject based room could make a lot of sense, especially if it’s content they buy regularly, and they know users habitually gravitate to.  Use the strength of the collection to work out what makes sense for a curated list and what could live better in a room.” Some subject room suggestions include a Romance room, Graphic Novel/Comic room; a Business room, a wellness room.

Many libraries are already opting to include new rooms in their collection, Hancock Public Library implemented both an eBook and Audiobook room, giving their customers a space to browse for their next read while filtering out to their preferred format.  CLAMS, Inc. wanted a place for patrons to browse their Sponsored Collections, and a room fit their needs perfectly.

eReading Rooms sponsored collections