As many of you know, the library is a founding member of the WVDELI which provides eBooks, eAudiobooks and movies for download to cardholders.  The WVDELI consists of 11 libraries, 9 public and 2 academic including Kanawha County, Marion County, Clarksburg-Harrison and Ohio County Library among its members.  

 

It is our most used electronic resource with over 70,000 items valuing over $3,000,000 dollars.  The agreement is that each library spend at least $10,000 per year on content that is available to all members of the consortia.  Circulation is nearly 50,000 items for the entire group every month.

 

Another of our popular electronic resources is RBDigital which was formerly Recorded Books.  RBDigital has eBooks, audiobooks and databases including The Great Courses, Acorn TV and Zinio. 

 

Through the group purchasing of the WVDELI, the members purchased a subscription to the entire backlist (30,000) from Recorded Books.  This subscription expired on June 30th and Recorded Books changed the terms of our subscription limiting access.  That is the reason that some of you have found your wish lists or books that you had not finished listening to no longer available.

 

Complicating matters further is that Recorded Books has been bought up by the same company that owns Overdrive and will be transferring items we do own over to Overdrive.  This should happen within the next month.  So far, we are unsure how the electronic databases will be handled.  So, expect some confusion in the next few months.  The one good result is that in the past it was rare that we could purchase titles from Recorded Books for Overdrive; obviously in the future having to go to two different platforms will become simplified.