OverDrive, a US-based digital distributor of e-books, audio books, music and video, has announced that Cleveland Public Library has become the first public library to offer e-book downloads in the industry standard EPUB format. More than 8,500 libraries powered by OverDrive will also soon be able to offer e-books in the EPUB format, along with over 150,000 titles in audio book, e-book and video formats. Many of these are compatible with both Mac and iPod.
OverDrive distributes thousands of EPUB e-books from top publishers. All EPUB e-book downloads from the OverDrive-powered library download website are borrowed just like a print book. A library customer can browse a library's digital catalogue for titles, check out a title with a library card, and download the e-book to his or her home computer. The titles can be transferred from the library customer's home computer to a Sony Reader PRS-505 (with proper firmware installed) or PRS-700 using the Adobe Digital Editions software. At the end of the lending period, the file automatically expires and Adobe Digital Editions prompts the user to delete the title from his or her computer.
Readers at both Cleveland Public Library and CLEVNET member libraries can check out and download EPUB e-books from the library's download website. Patron-defined lending periods will also be available for the first time at Cleveland Public Library site, http://emedia.clevnet.org. The new feature allows libraries to offer a variety of borrowing options, such as 7, 14, or 21 day lending periods. Fast readers can now select a shorter checkout time, allowing them to borrow more titles from their library. Patron-defined lending periods, EPUB e-books and other upcoming enhancements will be demonstrated at the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting 2009 on January 23-26.
EPUB is a reflowable, XML-based format for e-books and other digital publications developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum and adopted by several publishers and technology firms as the industry standard for e-books. OverDrive, an IDPF member company, is claimed to be the only library download service supporting EPUB and integrating the format into a single platform for delivering digital audio books, e-books, music and video to library customers.
Earlier this month, STM publisher Hindawi Publishing announced the addition of EPUB to its online platform for all of its journal and book publications. The new digital format is expected to allow the publisher to produce and make available a single digital file that combines the benefits of the high fidelity typography typically found in PDFs along with the benefits of XML structured content, high resolution images, scalable vector graphics, and font embedding.
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