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Comment by BeetleB | Hacker News Reader

I see that Overdrive is taking away a nice feature. What the author is missing is the comparison with physical books, which never had this feature. You want to recommend the library get a book? You fill out the form they have. That process still works regardless of the format.

Overdrive gave them something better than what they ever had, and then took it away. The libraries aren't left off worse than before.

Personally, I always search using the library catalog's web site, so this whole article is about a feature I never saw. I would encourage everyone search that way instead of directly on Overdrive.

I haven't looked up the numbers recently, but after a spike in ebook usage several years ago, the percentage dropped and I suspect continues to do so. Most people are over the hype and have returned to physical book usage.

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> What the author is missing is the comparison with physical books, which never had this feature. You want to recommend the library get a book? You fill out the form they have. That process still works regardless of the format.

It doesn't. I used to be able to submit a request for printed and digital books, but my library stopped accepting those requests for digital books and (just as I commented elsewhere in this thread) now refers me to the Notify Me feature and Overdrive catalog (and if it's not in the catalog, I can't request it do be added).

> and if it's not in the catalog, I can't request it do be added

If its not in the catalog requesting it from the library isn't really doing anything for you but give you false hope of it appearing. Wouldn't you rather know your request isn't going to be fruitful ahead of time instead of thinking your request is doing something when its just going straight into the bin?

And, can you really blame the library from not wanting to have to maintain two lists of digital requests, especially since those digital requests will probably be delivered through Libby and requesting through Libby will actually notify you when its available, and let you know if its an actually requestable title?

Imagine going to a restaurant where they didn't have a menu you just asked the server for food and maybe eventually they'll show up sometime with food for you without ever telling you if they could even serve that dish. Somehow you'd prefer this model!

You are being facetious. Libraries used to be able to do this and this is exactly how it was working until relatively recently (I received a notification earlier this year as someone who submitted requests for digital books in the past).

> If its not in the catalog requesting it from the library isn't really doing anything for you but give you false hope of it appearing.

That's precisely the point. If it's not in the catalog, there has to be a way to request it to be added (assuming the publisher allows that), but right now there is no even a mechanism to do this, as there is no competition and the full control is on the Libby side to include or not include an item (without libraries having any say in it).

> Libraries used to be able to do this

> without libraries having any say in it

You're assuming the libraries ever had a say in what Overdrive's catalog was. I can't imagine they ever did.

Some libraries probably presented a UI suggesting they could do it as their own combined catalog probably wasn't synced to whatever Overdrive's library was. But you're then assuming your request for a book that wasn't in the Overdrive library actually got to the point of notifying Overdrive, which is yet to be shown either way.

I doubt it did anything more than have a librarian check if the book was in the Overdrive catalog, and if not they probably just closed the ticket. And right now this idea has just as much evidence as yours.

That's the fault of the library, not Overdrive (and I would thus agree it is enshittification).

Edit: Just saw my library does the same. Sad.

> Overdrive gave them something better than what they ever had, and then took it away

But the feature still exists, so this is just untrue.

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