Have Access to Free Books on your Phone with an Overdrive App
Apps are all the rage lately. Many can’t pull themselves away from Angry Birds or Cut the Rope these days. However, there is a more useful app that is available that allows you access to digital e-books, audiobooks, music and videos. In fact over 13,000 titles are offered from schools and public libraries.
This app is called Overdrive and it is available for the Iphone and Android. According to WSJ.com “Libraries buy the in-copyright digital books like they do print books — they can loan one “copy” at a time to a patron, with Overdrive keeping track of the length of the loans and access to each title.”
The books can be on loan for up 21 days and then they become no longer available. There’s no running back to the library to make returns. WSJ stated, “Overdrive’s app previously worked for audiobook downloads, but the company added e-book download capabilities in an update that it rolled out in December. Already, some 100,000 users have downloaded the updated version of the app. Much of the buzz about e-books has focused on how they’re upending bookstores. But libraries are changing, too, now that patrons can check out books without ever even stepping into the physical library. Overdrive says it witnessed a 200% increase in e-book checkouts in 2010 over 2009.”
Overdrive is based out of Cleveland. On Overdrive’s site, they claim, “OverDrive currently hosts more than 500,000 premium digital titles from more than 1,000 publishers, including Random House, HarperCollins, BBC Audiobooks America, Harlequin, and Bloomsbury. Our digital distribution services are utilized by more than 13,000 libraries, schools, and colleges worldwide. For two consecutive years, OverDrive has been named to the EContent 100 as a company that matters most in the digital content industry.”
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