One of the companies that has garnered the most attention in the library industry is the Douglas County Library. This is one of America’s most progressive because it deals with 3M, Overdrive, Smashwords, and independent publishers. The library carries almost 25,000 ebooks and a solid back-end to make the logistics management easy to deal with.

Jamie Larue is the main coordinator of the Douglas County Library, and has been a driving force in its digital success. Instead of locking the library into a singular content distribution platform, such as Overdrive and 3M, Douglas County deals with both. This allows the library to carry ebooks from a number of vendors and offer a wider selection of content. Recently, it made a deal with indie publishing company Smashwords to carry over 10,000 titles into its library ecosystem. Jamie mentioned, “Many of the Smashwords titles we have are the most loaned books we offer, most readers only care about a specific genre and don’t really worry about the publisher or the author.”

eBook discovery is a hot-button topic that many libraries are facing. With a huge catalog of digital books in the system, how are customers aware of the best titles available or books that suit their particular tastes? Douglas County finds most of its success through its dedicated mobile apps. If you love Science Fiction, you can have all new titles brought to your attention. It also allows users to opt into an expanded search platform for recommended titles based on your past reads. Finally, it has refined its searching algorithms that have many similarities with Amazon.

Jamie and Douglas County are acting as evangelists to libraries all over the USA. Jamie made the ILS and code available for any library to download and incorporate into their own systems. A large consortium of libraries in California have adapted Douglas County’s model to develop their own systems and stock a large number of titles while managing their collections effectively.

What does the future hold for ebooks in libraries? Jamie mentioned that ebook discovery and prices of big six publishers remain the largest barriers to further digital adoption. For example, Hachette increased its ebook prices in 2012. For example, the title Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer increased from $22.99 to $34.99, and 4th of July by James Patterson went from $13.99 to $20.99. In many cases, the hardcover title is way cheaper to actually purchase than the digital edition. The large pricing discrepancies are prompting more libraries to switch to stocking more indie titles, which are friendlier on the pocketbook.

Michael Kozlowski (3048 Posts)

Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about electronic readers and technology for the last four years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the Huffington Post, CNET and more. Michael frequently travels to international events such as IFA, Computex, CES, Book Expo and a myriad of others. If you have any questions about any of his articles, please send Michael Kozlowski an email to [email protected]