Last weekend, several members of Team OverDrive spent four days in Chicago meeting with hundreds of librarians from around the country. The ALA Annual meetings offer an opportunity to interact with publishers, authors, librarians and the decision makers that help shape both the digital reading landscape and the library world as a whole. While in The Windy City, we presented the latest innovations from OverDrive including Libby, our new one-tap reading app, as well as our latest lending model options and how libraries can work with their community schools to increase the value of their digital collection.

Speaking of Libby, librarians loved the elegant, new user experience as well as the simplicity of being able to jump instantly from library collections to the books your reading and your shelf of checkouts and holds. They were excited about the built in curation and filtering options as well as the ability to toggle instantly between library cards and differing library collections. Team members showed Libby off on a life-sized iPhone to the delight of our library partners. Our CEO, Steve Potash, even posed with Libby and a librarian NAMED Libby.

Steve with Libby and Libby

 

The event was full of momentous occasions including a brief visit with the Librarian of Congress, Dr. Carla Hayden (shown above) as well as our most recent Big Library Read author, Marie Benedict, stopping by to chat and pause for a photo opp with her book The Other Einstein. Our Professional Book Nerds came to Chicago as well to interview authors including Pulitzer Prize winners Colson Whitehead and Matthew Desmond as well as Fiona Davis and #1 New York Times bestselling YA author Kerri Maniscalco. You can listen to their latest episode below to hear all about their adventures in Chicago and get some book recommendations.

Conferences like ALA enable us to not only show off where digital reading is heading through our latest technologies and innovations, it also brings wonderful feedback from our library partners. Another conference is quickly approaching that we’d love to have you join us here in Cleveland for Digipalooza and we still have a few registration spots open. Register today for three days of education, networking and fun!

Marie Benedict, author of the most recent Big Library Read selection The Other Einstein, stops by the booth
Our Professional Book Nerds interviewed some incredible authors including Colson Whitehead, Matthew Desmond, Kerri Maniscalco and Fiona Davis