Overdrive Buys RBdgital and Shutters App

Overdrive, the company that distributes ebooks to libraries in the United States and Canada bought the library unit of RBdigital recently. At the end of January, they transferred all the magazines available through RBdigital to the Overdrive service. 

Overdrive bought the library unit of RBdigital last year, which meant that all of their audiobooks and magazines would be available on the platform. Many libraries had their patrons download multiple apps in order to read or listen to digital content, but this is not the case anymore. Thousands of libraries are now making blog posts, sending out newsletters and starting public awareness campaigns that they are transitioning away from RBdigital and Zinio and only doing business with Overdrive and their Libby app.

Libby is compatible with all major computers and devices, iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets and Chromebook. Through Libby, readers can also “send to Kindle” (U.S. only). All titles will automatically expire at the end of the lending period and there are no late fees. Readers can also download titles onto Libby for offline use. Named one of PCMag’s Best Free Software of 2019 and one of Popular Mechanics’ 20 Best Apps of the Decade, Libby is one of the best apps on the market.

I liked the RBdigital app a lot and was disappointed to see this. 

The Libby app is similar to the RBdigital app in many respects, at least as far as the reading experience goes. You have a choice of reading the magazine in the page layout view or switching to a text-only mode. However, I found a few things that could be improved.

• Overdrive has about twice the number of magazines that RBdigital had. As far as I can see, all the magazines that were on RBdigital have been transferred to Overdrive. Given the number of magazines, an alphabetic toolbar would be handy for browsing.
• Text mode, which I use a lot, has some limitations. The text appears in medium grey on a black background instead of white on black. I find it hard to read as there isn't enough contrast. Text colour should be user-selectable, or at least the text contrast should be.
• In text mode, you can't swipe to the next article, which was a handy feature in the RBdigital app.
• I installed Libby on my tablet and linked my library card to it. After tagging a few magazines that I wanted to read, I switched over to my phone. My tagging didn't come over from the tablet, so I assume it's stored in the device and not in the cloud. 

I'm glad to see that I can still read the magazines that I was used to reading on RBdigital, but the reading experience for magazines won't be quite as pleasant. (I don't use Libby for ebooks).