OverDrive Upgrade July 1

OverDrive and its companion app, Libby, will be offline on Monday, July 1, for upgrades.

Any content that is checked out and downloaded to your device will remain unaffected. New checkouts, holds, and streaming will be temporarily unavailable.

When the upgrades are complete, cardholders will find more than 280,000 additional e-books and digital audiobooks, plus new digital magazines, when they log back in.

The upgrades are the results of Vernon Area's new membership in the Digital Library of Illinois (DLIL).

The Digital Library of Illinois is the largest consortium in the state for digital material on OverDrive, the leading digital reading platform for libraries and schools worldwide. 

By joining, Vernon Area Public Library triples its offerings of e-book and audiobook titles and increase the number of copies available for checkout from 17,134 to more than 300,000. 

For patrons, this means more choice and shorter waits for popular materials, such as current bestsellers The Women by Kristin Hannah or The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride.

“We are excited to provide patrons with access to more content, and more quickly,” said Vernon Area Public Library Director Anne Rasmussen. “This agreement allows us to expand the breadth and depth of our digital offerings, decrease hold times on popular materials, and deliver better value for taxpayers by sharing materials with our neighbors.”

The upgrade will also provide Vernon Area patrons with a new collection of digital magazines, including popular periodicals covering news and politics, health and fitness, food and cooking, crafts, sports, and other subjects.

The transition will be nearly seamless for Vernon Area Public Library e-book and audiobook readers, who will continue to access OverDrive materials through their browser or on Libby, the popular and free e-reading app that is already familiar to library e-book readers.

Libby/OverDrive will be unavailable on Monday, July 1, during the transition. Materials that are currently checked-out and downloaded on readers’ devices will be unaffected. The new materials will be available to readers when they re-log in to Libby/OverDrive on Tuesday, July 2.

The Digital Library of Illinois (DLIL) is managed by the Electronic Content Consortium (ECC), a nonprofit collaborative of libraries across Illinois. The ECC leverages economies of scale to jointly negotiate and purchase electronic content at terms that may not be available to standalone libraries. 
More than 120 Illinois libraries participate, including nearby Deerfield, Palatine, Highland Park, Mount Prospect, and Northbrook public libraries.