March 27th, 2009 by Scot Colford
Announcing Star Ratings and Customizable Lending Periods for OverDrive!
Our friends over at OverDrive have spiced things up a bit and have added two frequently-requested features to the popular downloadable media service. Check them out now and see how you can customize it to suit your needs.
Star Ratings
Have you listened to a great downloadable audio book and want to share your opinion about it? Did you download and watch a video that … well, didn’t meet your expectations? Share your love or apathy online by rating the title!
It’s very simple. Just log in to OverDrive with your library barcode number via the “My Digital Account” tab. Then look up the title you want to review and click the number of stars you’d like to rate it. As more people rate the same title, the average rating of all users will change so you’ll know what other people like before you take a chance on a title.
Customizable Lending Periods
Have you ever kicked yourself for zooming through them ten audio books in a week only to discover that you have to wait another week before they check themselves back in? Have you ever downloaded a video and wanted to keep it for another week? If so, you’ll love the ability to customize the lending periods for different formats.
Now, when you add something to your cart and click to “Proceed to checkout”, you’ll see a new drop down menu that allows you to change the default lending period. Know you’ll finish an audio book quickly? Choose “7 days” and you’ll be able to check out something in its place in a week.
What’s more, you can set the default lending period for different media formats by logging in to your account via the “My Digital Account” tab and selecting the “Lending Periods” link. Whether you change the lending period by default or on the fly as you check out, you’ll have the choice between 7 or 14 days for eBooks and audio books, or between 3, 5, 7, or 14 days for music and video!
Posted in Database Updates, New Developments
December 5th, 2008 by Scot Colford
It is with utmost pleasure that I announce to you — drumroll, please — OverDrive is finally usable on Mac OS computers! Now you can download DRM-free MP3 format audiobooks using the OverDrive Media Console for Mac OSX.
Please try it out and let us know what you think. I know you’ve been waiting a long time for this, and so have we.
Posted in General
July 17th, 2008 by Scot Colford
If you use Auralog, our language learning service, you may have received one or more recent emails indicating access was unavailable and indeed, if you attempted to visit the resource you encountered an error message. We are working with the vendor to restore service as soon as possible — likely by the end of the upcoming weekend.
Thank you for your patience while we sort this out!
Posted in Access Problems
July 2nd, 2008 by Scot Colford
We just received word that OverDrive will be begin performing regular maintenance on our downloadable media site. Here are the details that OverDrive provided us.
In a continuous effort to provide our partners with a robust and secure server platform, OverDrive is establishing a monthly maintenance window to allow for systems maintenance should it be needed. Â This maintenance window will be scheduled for the third Thursday of every month, from 6:00 am - 8:00 am (Eastern Time).
All OverDrive sites, including … [the Boston Public Library downloadable media catalog] …, may be down for all or part of these regular maintenance windows. It is also possible that your website will not be affected during some maintenance windows. Â Please be assured that if your library site is affected, we will make every effort to display informative messaging to
patrons that visit your site during any outage.
**When is this maintenance going to happen?**
On an ongoing basis, a maintenance window will be scheduled on the third Thursday of each month, from 6:00 am - 8:00 am (Eastern Time). Â After analyzing usage data from our global network of partners, we selected this time because it should minimize impact on end-users.
The first maintenance window is scheduled for Thursday, July 17 from 6:00 am - 8:00 am EDT.
**Why is OverDrive performing this maintenance?**
OverDrive is continually working to offer the best in service and infrastructure to all of our partners and our partners’ end-users. Â As new hardware, hosting, and security opportunities become available to us, we need to upgrade our systems to provide these benefits to you. Â These are typical of the upgrades you have come to expect from us as we work to deliver the best possible experience with our sites and systems.
Posted in Access Problems, Database Updates, Vendor News Release
June 11th, 2008 by Scot Colford
Boy, we sure didn’t make any friends among Mac users, did we? (Nor among the few folks like me who run Linux on the desktop.)
I’ve heard from hundreds of disappointed Apple fans in the past several years since we launched OverDrive , our digital media download service. Believe me, we would have liked to provide this service to all library borrowers. But I can assure you that the decision to provide this content to Windows users in no way signified a decision to exclude users of other operating systems. It’s just the only service model that was available to us.
The digital rights management used by Apple is called FairPlay and this DRM system does not allow for the lending of digital content. It only works when content is purchased by the end user: the licenses cannot expire the way that Windows Media licenses can. This function is necessary to provide the services a library offers. So far, no other method of lending copyrighted digital content has been available to libraries besides Windows DRM.
But now — are you sitting down? — OverDrive announced this spring that they will begin offering thousands of titles for download on any platform, digital rights management-free. The company is still working on encoding the new content and working on the Mac version of OverDrive Media Console. I’ll have more detail on a timeline after I visit the company at the end of July, but you Apple fans will likely be able to use OverDrive by the end of the year.
See this article for more information.
In the meantime, there are thousands of public domain audio titles available from LibriVox and the Internet Archive. Be sure to check those out! You’ll find links to these sites on our Electronic Resources page .
See? We really do like you!
Posted in New Developments
April 17th, 2008 by Scot Colford
Proquest has resolved this issue and HeratigeQuest is once again accessible.
HeratigeQuest is currently unavailable due to an issue on the provider’s server. They are aware of the problem and are working toward a resolution. We’ll update this post as we learn more.
Posted in Access Problems
April 10th, 2008 by Scot Colford
Access to Integrum has now been restored.
We have just been alerted to an error that appears when we try to use Integrum, the Russian news database. The vendor has been alerted to the problem and we are waiting for more information. Please check back here to follow the progress of this issue.
Thank you for your patience.
Posted in Access Problems
April 1st, 2008 by Scot Colford
This issue is now resolved and all Central Library computers should be able to access this resource.
Please note that due to technical issues at the New England Historic Genealogical Society, access to New England Ancestors is only available by speaking directly with staff in our Central Library’s Social Sciences department. Please visit Bates Hall on the second floor of the McKim building if you would like to use this resource.
We hope that access will once again be available from all Central Library workstations in the near future. Thank you for your patience.
Posted in Access Problems
