You’ve seen it in action at your library: patrons who love digital reading really love digital reading. In fact, they’re most likely some of your most voracious customers.
Hoopla’s got some good news for you and your power users: by the end of this month, e-books—including comics and graphic novel options—will be available through Hoopla Digital with an Allegheny County library card.
The new content, which includes books from a variety of publishers, will be available through the browser interface as well as LightSpeed, the new Hoopla 3.0 version of their popular app. The eReader technology is built directly into Hoopla’s infrastructure, so there’s no need to download additional software or create a second log-in: everything you’ll want to read will be right there at your fingertips with no additional learning curve needed.
The Hoopla eReader will have a number of features your patrons may have already come to expect from ebooks, including appearance adjustments (such as font size and background color), bookmark creation, and syncing across devices. To make reading digital comics more enjoyable, the eReader also contains the Action View panel, which activates with a simple click or two, depending on what kind of device you’re using. Action View lets readers appreciate comics the way they were designed to be enjoyed, with both full-page and panel-to-panel views.
The content itself will contain a wide variety of reading choices for library users of all ages and interests, including kids, teens, African American fiction, and LGBTQ lit. You and your patrons will be familiar with many of the participating publishers, such as:
IDW/Top Shelf
Orca Book Publishers
Paragon
PM Press
Riptide
Saddleback
Sounds True
Tyndale House
More reading choices, with no additional digital hassle? Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? The ebook content should arrive just in time for summer reading, which will give you and your patrons the chance to see for yourself.
The following new features will be available to Overdrive users starting Wednesday, April 29th.
If a user borrows a title and the title has (or accumulates) holds, the user will no longer see a “Renew” link for that title on their bookshelf. Instead, they will see a “Request Again” link that lets them join the title’s holds list and borrow the title again when it becomes available. This is the same way that the “Renew” link currently works for titles with holds; only the language is being updated.
The limitation that only lets users renew a title (or request it again) one time during their loan is being removed.
Users will be able to assign star ratings to titles they currently have checked out right from their bookshelf. Users will still be able to rate any title from the title’s details page as well.
A new “Narrated” label will help users identify which eBooks are available in OverDrive Read with narration:
On the title details pages for narrated eBooks, users will also see an audio icon next to the OverDrive Read format:
From here, users can click either the “Narrated” label or the audio icon to learn more about narration.
The “Enhanced” label for enhanced titles will be updated to match the style of the “Narrated” label:
Last week OverDrive released the most recent version of the OverDrive app with a number of enhancements. One of these enhancements is the option to select a dyslexic font for reading eBooks. Standard typefaces are often difficult to read for people with dyslexia as the letters are hard to differentiate and words tend to jumble together. Dyslexic fonts provide greater contrast in letters which helps to solve this problem. Read more about what makes the dyslexic font different here.
This new font option will make reading easier for library patrons who struggle with the condition. Determining letters is now easier, allowing readers to concentrate on the book’s content instead.
Dyslexic Font Sample
To select the dyslexic font, tap the center of the device’s screen when reading a title and choose the font options button. Then simply select the preferred dyslexic font. As always, users can also adjust the spacing, font size and screen color to make their reading experience more enjoyable.
OverDrive states that this update is one of many enhancements planned for the app – with more coming later in the year – that will continue to help users get the most out of their digital reading experience. Stay tuned to the Virtual Lexicon for news on future updates.
