Here’s yet another article with the following quote:
“‘The patron doesn’t have to do anything after the lending period,’ said Steve Potash, chief executive of OverDrive.”
Trouble is, this is not exactly true as demonstrated by the article’s previous paragraph:
“When the audiobook is due, the patron must renew it or find it automatically “returned” in a virtual sense: The file still sits on the patron’s computer, [emphasis mine] but encryption makes it unplayable beyond the borrowing period.”
What the patron has to do is now delete the file off thier computer. Granted, this is not the biggest deal in the world but, let’s be realistic here, most people don’t clean out their hard drives nearly as often as they should. I can envision a regular user of this service filling their drive on their older computer in a matter of months.
I’m not advocating that the file delete itself (o.k. maybe I am,) but the “spokespeople” need to be a little more up front about how their service works, or doesn’t.
Michael Sauers is the Director of Logan Library in Logan, UT. Prior to this he was one of the founding staff and Technology Manager for Do Space in Omaha, NE. After earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany's School of Information Science and Policy Michael spent his first 20 years as a librarian training other librarians in technology along with time as a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, a technology consultant, and a bookseller. He has written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and has published 14 books ranging from library technology, blogging, Web design, and an index to a popular horror magazine. In his spare time, he blogs at TravelinLibrarian.info, runs The Collector's Guide to Dean Koontz website at CollectingKoontz.com, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
Unless otherwise stated, all opinions are my own and are not to be considered those of the City of Logan, UT.
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