Meet Libby

If you’re just starting out with library ebooks or audiobooks (and for the rest of this post, “books” will mean both), you may have planned to download OverDrive onto your tablet or smartphone. Well, don’t. Use the new Libby app instead.

Libby is actually created by OverDrive (the company) as well, but it is so much simpler to install and borrow books with than the old app.  With Libby, it takes just one tap to borrow and download the book—there’s no need to choose a format.

Libby also has many new features you can play with, like tags to create lists of books you want to read, highlighting and annotation options for the books you’re borrowing, and an activity timeline that shows your borrowing, returns and holds history. It also shows all the books you have borrowed on one shelf, even if they’re from different libraries. So if you borrow some books from the White Plains collection and others from the Westchester Library System, you can see them all at once. The same is true for any holds you have.

Libby is available for free on the App Store and Google Play. In terms of operating systems, it’s compatible with Android 4.4, iOS 9, Windows 10 or higher.  If your device is old, it may not be able to install Libby.

If you already have the OverDrive app, you can install Libby and use both apps at the same time. But don’t remove OverDrive from your device yet, because it still has features Libby lacks, like accessibility for the visually impaired, the Recommend to Library feature, and a multilingual interface. OverDrive (the company) plans to add these features to Libby by the fall of 2017.  They have no plans to retire the old app for now.

Categories: Featured, Homepage, and Technology.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *