OverDrive has offered a rebuttal to recent criticism that it may not be providing the same catalog of material to all the libraries in its network. The Cleveland-based vendor said in a blog post on Monday that “under the permissions set by authors and publishers, 99.9% of US public libraries served by OverDrive have access to the exact same catalog of eBook, audiobook, music, and video titles.”
The company emphasized that permissions and copyright protections, set by publishers and authors, affect the digital content it can offer. These rules, and the prices, are “constantly under review by publishers, authors, agents, their associations, and many others that impact how we grow our catalog,” the post reads.
The post then highlights the following restrictions and rules that publishers and authors require:
1. Geographic and Territorial Rights: Publishers make their content available based on the geographic territory for which they have rights, expressed on a title-by-title basis. This is why our Canadian, UK and Australian libraries see different catalogs when they log into Content Reserve/Marketplace.
2. Library, School, or Special Library Markets: Select suppliers (publishers, film studios, music labels, etc.) have the ability to (and a few do) make their content available only to schools or only to public libraries This may be because the supplier has granted “exclusive” rights to other publishers for these markets, or the publisher may have its own sales force that calls on accounts in these markets.
3. Different Formats and Different Re-distribution Rights: In some cases, multiple publishers may have the same book available, each providing different formats or different geographic permissions. As a result, we occasionally experience changes to title availability where a publisher or author signs a new distribution agreement that alters these rights.
4. Connection to Library Service Area: As [OverDrive CEO] Steve Potash communicated in writing to every one of our library partners earlier this year, select publishers set restrictions on their catalogs where the library allows access to the library’s digital collection by card holders that have no connection to the library’s service area. We are constantly working with library IT teams to test and validate patrons’ card status, before they can download copyrighted materials. In very few cases, where an institution does not restrict download access to only patrons with connections to their service area (such as residents, students, property or business owners) there may be limits on access to select publishers’ catalogs.
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