Libby - The Library Reading App
Libby is a library app that is easy to use and secure, and is designed to be universal across devices. It allows users to search, filter results, place holds, and borrow titles, and also includes a tag system to track titles without counting against the borrowing limit. Additionally, the app is designed to be used with car audio systems, making it more user-friendly than its predecessor.
- DESIGN
- EASE OF USE
- PRICE
Libby is your app for reading happiness.
Every year – with the turn of the new year – I find myself renewing the vow to read more. I love reading and the places it takes me creatively as a writer but I can’t ever seem to find the time to dedicate to it. I have literally lost myself in books for hours before and these days, I just can’t find those buckets of hours laying around.
As it happens, on January 4, 2023, I renewed my library card after a few years of non-use. Someone on our town council made a horrible remark on social media about libraries. This quote was made after there was a funding proposal introduced for a $35 million construction project for a new library in our county.
It’s like investing in typewriters today. Extending and building more new libraries when their own board admittedly says there is no foot traffic and we nee to be considering closing them.
James Raben, Vanderburgh County Council 1/4/23
This comment made me want to invest more time in my personal connection to our library system. I’ve always loved visiting libraries and I love the mission of them. To provide a collection of materials for the public to use for learning and expanding their world view.
Some of my earliest memories are of visiting our hometown library with my mom and my brother to borrow some fun books on the weekends. We were always encouraged to read growing up and because of that, I’ve always had a love of libraries.
I remembered how a few years ago our library system had an app and I ended up listening to the majority of one of my favorite reference books — Creating Magic: 10 Common Sense Leadership Strategies from a Life at Disney by Lee Cockerell — on it.
The app was not very functional in comparison to apps such as Kindle but it got the job done…mostly. Because of its quirks, I fell out of touch with it though. That said this horrid remark but the council person made me look into the services the library was providing now. I was surprised and pleased to find out that they had upgraded to an app called Libby which is actually a current “Editors Choice” app in the App Store.
Overview
Libby is actually an evolution of the OverDrive app that more than 88,000 libraries use worldwide. OverDrive as a company was founded in 1986 and was reorganized around electronic media in the 1990s. OverDrive was launched as a content distribution service in 2000 and it has since grown to be the largest digital content catalog in the world. The OverDrive family of services includes Kanopy, TeachingBooks, Sora, and, of course, Libby, the library reading app.
In late 2021, it was announced that the legacy OverDrive app would be discontinued in favor of the Libby app.
The Libby App is OverDrive’s most updated app for connecting seamlessly to your favorite eMaterials with advanced syncing, tags and searching capabilities.
With the Libby app, users can access ebooks, audiobooks, and magazines among other content available through a library system. The best part about Libby is that users can access the content for free — just like borrowing a physical book directly from a library branch.
Main Features
- Browse your library’s digital catalog of books — from classics to NYT best-sellers
- Borrow and enjoy ebooks, audiobooks, and magazines
- Download titles for offline reading, or stream them to save space
- Send ebooks to your Kindle (U.S. libraries only)
- Listen to audiobooks via Apple CarPlay
- Use tags to create your must-read list and any other book lists you want
- Keep your reading position automatically synced on all your devices
In the ebook reader:
- Adjust text size, background color, and book design
- Zoom into magazines and comic books
- Define and search for words and phrases
- Read and listen to read-alongs with your kids
- Add bookmarks, notes, and highlights
In the audio player:
- Slow down or speed up the audio (0.6 to 3.0x)
- Set a sleep timer
- Simply swipe to skip forward and backward
- Add bookmarks, notes, and highlights
Pricing and Availability
Libby is available for free. It works with public libraries that use OverDrive. Over 90% of public libraries in North America utilize OverDrive and Libby can be found in 78 countries worldwide. In order to access the content available, a membership to a participating library is required with a valid library card. Most library memberships are available at no charge as well. Your given library system selects the content that is available for its members to access.
Libby is available on any smartphone or tablet (iOS or Android) or through a web browser (libbyapp.com). Content can also be transferred to an ereader such as Kindle Fire.
Privacy Policy
According to the App Store, OverDrive, Inc. only collects diagnostics and usage data from the user. The diagnostics might be linked to a user’s identity, but the usage data is not. You can read the full privacy policy here.
User Experience
Getting started with Libby is super easy. The user should first ensure that they have a valid library card and that their library system utilizes Libby/OverDrive. Once the app is downloaded on the user’s preferred device, the user just needs to follow the on-screen prompts to find their library. A user’s library card number will need to be entered before they can look at the content. You can enter more than one library card. A step-by-step tutorial on how to get started with Libby can be found here.
After you have verified your membership with a participating library, the content that is available for your system will be shown. You can search, filter results, place a hold on a title, or borrow one. The only thing you can’t do is place a hold on a physical book for pick-up in your library. Each library system chooses a user’s loan and hold limit. Magazines and extra resources don’t count against the borrowing limit though.
I have been VERY impressed with this app — not only as a library app but as an app system in general. First of all, the app is set up to be universal across devices. I personally have it installed on my iPhone 14 Pro and my iPad Pro. I also access the app through my web browser on my MacBook Air. One of the most impressive things about this is that the app is connected not through a login/password, but through a generated code that the app provides. It’s very secure and extremely easy to connect between devices.
Second, the app is simple. You start out on a search page, find a title you want to read or listen to and then select it for a hold, a loan, or you can tag it. I have a tag set up called wishlist, which I use to tag titles I’ve been wanting to read, but am not ready for yet. I did this so that I can keep track of those titles but they don’t immediately count against my borrowing limit.
Finally, the app is designed to be used with car audio systems. I have an iPhone and it shows up as a CarPlay app. It is supposed to work the same way with Android Auto, but I haven’t tested that out yet. It’s brilliant that the developers tied that functionality in because the old OverDrive app that I used did not have that included. I had to connect my phone via Bluetooth, which worked, but it was problematic.
The app wasn’t really designed well for audio books. It wouldn’t hold your place and it was hard to place bookmarks. The experience just wasn’t very user-friendly. Libby is a complete different story.
Conclusion
Libby is a great app. It has helped me reconnect with our library system and opened up my opportunities for reading more. It’s is a great tool for connecting to library materials, and its features make it easy to read and listen to ebooks and audiobooks. The fact that Libby is free to use is just the icing on the cake. I can highly recommend Libby as a great way to access library materials and to get more reading done.
For more information, visit overdrive.com, Facebook, and Twitter.
4 Comments
Your entire explanation of the app is complete fiction. I think you must have been paid to write this review. It’s a horrible app!!!!!
Hello –
Thank you for your comment. I’m sorry if you have had a bad experience with the app. This was not a sponsored review in anyway. I actually started using it for personal use and decided to write about it because I didn’t realize how much this improved my personal library experience. I have had a few issues, but nothing major and I do still recommend it to others. I hope that your experience is able to get better over time.
I think the issue Katrina has is similar to mine – I’ve used the old Overdrive app which, while less flashy, is a better experience in almost every way. In Overdrive you could switch off the page turn animations (just a waste of reading time that really adds nothing for me) as well as use volume buttons to turn pages. It was also a much better experience for audio book listeners – it kept much better track of your place, and didn’t require the book be downloaded multiple times, with resets of your reading place, like Libby does. I’m actually trying to get my Library to switch apps over this. Libby is better than nothing though :).
I agree. Libby is terrible. I download a book but it still skips during the playback. And that’s happened to me several times. I never had that problem with overdrive. If also takes forever to download a book.