Help Metro reach 1 million OverDrive checkouts!
Submitted by tim.spindle on Thu, 12/10/2015 - 15:34
To give you an idea of how exclusive 1 million digital checkouts is for a public library system, last year (excluding library consortia) only 10 systems made the list, a list which included such recognizable names as New York Public Library, Seattle Public Library, and Los Angeles Public Library. We're emailing over 50,000 customers tomorrow to promote OverDrive so you might start receiving more questions about it. We came up with some ideas that we thought might help us reach this checkout goal:
- Print copies of the How To guides to keep and distribute at the circulation/reference desks and point customers to the location of the guides on the website at metrolibrary.org/downloads.
- Print out the eBook Holiday Chaos poster and display at ciruclation and reference desk. This poster uses the same graphics being used in the email blast.
- You can also order the eye-catching Downloads & Streaming "smartphone" that MAC created and post them around your library.
- If a customer can’t find a physical copy of a title, check the OverDrive catalog to see if we own a digital copy, ask the customer if they’ve tried OverDrive, and encourage them to do so by showing them the How To guides.
- Inform a customer that with OverDrive Read and OverDrive Listen, no software installation is required. They simply need an Internet connection in order to read or listen to their title in their browser (and they can even read OverDrive Read eBooks offline). OverDrive Read and OverDrive Listen are the easiest ways to enjoy our OverDrive collection.
- UNLIMITED RENEWALS! If there are no holds on an OverDrive title, it can be renewed an unlimited number of times until a hold is placed on it.
- Mention our eReading rooms for Kids and Teens.
- Mention our narrated eBooks for Kids which not only require no software installation to enjoy, but they're also an easy way for your little reader or pre-reader to follow along and it’s a way for the parent to not feel guilty about screen time.
Do you have any ideas that might help us promote our OverDrive collection to our customers? If so, share them with all of us in the comments section and good luck to all of us in working to reach this goal!
- Log in to post comments
Comments
How close are we? I would like to know so that I know what my strategy should be based on. I want to help out as best as I can here at RE. We'll get our thinking caps on and figure out how to best get those numbers (once we find out what they are) up to 1 million!
As of today, we're at 931,000. So your strategy should lie somewhere between pestering & carpet bombing :)
We used to have how-to hand out pamphlets behind the circulation desk for each device. My question is can we maybe get some more pamphlets or better - some of the cool Smart Phone bookmarks that people love! They have the metrolibrary.org/downloads at the bottom, easily directing customers to accessing Overdrive on their devices. Also the Smart Phone bookmarks not only mention books, magazines, and newspapers; they also mention Freegal, Streaming Video services, and Mango Languages.
I propose that we order more of these in lieu of printing off instructions for each device. Some of the how-to's are up to 6 pages long.
I know the Smart Phone Bookmarks are a hit with our customers!
I included the link to order more Smart Phone bookmarks in the blog post for all who might like to order more for their library. The How-Tos also mention all of our downloadable options with the exception that they contain the step by step directions for how to use each service (OverDrive, Freegal & Zinio) with a specific device. If printing the full handout seems too long, maybe printing only the OverDrive section would be an alternate solution? Or maybe they could be printed on demand for the customer after they share which device they own.
Thank you Tim. I didn't get a link to order more of those bookmarks. Where might I order these from? I did print off the "OverDrive" section, or at least what I thought you meant by searching Overdrive on metrolibrary.org. It is 4 pages but the first page is the one I think you were mentioning? I'm going to go to dog-eared-blog now and see if I can figure this out myself.
I guess all I need is the link to order more of these Smart Phone Bookmarks for us.
Thanks Tim!
Hi Alice,
Click the "Downloads & Streaming" link in the 1st bullet to be taken to the supply catalog for the smart phone bookmarks. As for the OverDrive section from the handouts, its length varies from handout to handout but I think it runs to a couple of pages across most of the handouts. I hope that helps.
You can order the "Smartphone" Downloads and Streaming bookmarks from the MAC supply catalog found on the Marketing Dept page.
Are the source files for the guides available anywhere? It would be great to be able to put them in Spanish.
Great idea! I'll send you the files in Word format so they can be translated & then saved as PDFs.