An app called Libby and the big business of library e-books

Re:An app called Libby and the big business of library e-books by nautilius on Thursday September 02, 2021 @10:26AM (#28392443)

Libby as a library app is a PITA. The latest update made it somewhat better, but the UI is still horrible. E.g., it has 5 menu buttons at the bottom that you can use to navigate between different parts of the app, _unless_ you press the center one, then the menu vanishes and you have to know that now you have to somehow swipe left, which will dump you in different menu point. You leave book info boxes by swiping down.

My biggest peeve is that I cannot simply look for a book across the different libraries I have access to. I have to select each one individually and repeat the search several times to find out that the book I am looking for is not available.

Finally, I wish there was a simple list where I can store books I am interested in without committing to it. The tag system can be used that way but is unpleasantly wonky. Why not make that a menu button rather than the 'timeline', which gives me an overview of the books I signed up for, loaned, and return dates for, I assume, the past 100 years. Why would I need that information as a top level button?

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Re:An app called Libby and the big business of library e-books by rripken on Thursday September 02, 2021 @11:49AM (#28393582)

If you've found the book but it isn't available you can search all your other cards by touching the two color card icon on the search result. It then searches for that book across your cards. Not an easily discoverable feature but its amazing when you find it. I only know about it b/c the app's ui choices didn't always make sense so I went through the tutorial hoping it explained something else.

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Re:An app called Libby and the big business of library e-books by nautilius on Thursday September 02, 2021 @12:00PM (#28393726)

Awesome, thank you!

EDIT: Unfortunately, it only works if you have actually/accidentally searched a library that _does_ have the book. So you still have to switch libraries manually, _until_ you have a lucky hit, _then_ you can check all other libraries with a button.

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Re:An app called Libby and the big business of library e-books by TMWNN on Friday September 03, 2021 @02:00AM (#28400887)

>If you've found the book but it isn't available you can search all your other cards by touching the two color card icon on the search result. It then searches for that book across your cards.

Amazing! I agree that this is not discoverable at all in the UI the last time I tried Libby.

That said, based on what nautilius said, searching at Overdrive.com is still superior because it properly searches across multiple libraries. (<https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/6uxca9/have_more_tha...>)

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Re:An app called Libby and the big business of library e-books by tfandango on Thursday September 02, 2021 @10:28AM (#28392485)

This sums up exactly my experience as well. Our library used to use Overdrive but switched to Libby (Or maybe Overdrive became Libby?). I can see why, it's nice and fancy looking, but it seems like I can't find my holds every single time for some reason. I constantly open the worthless chat pane.

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Re:An app called Libby and the big business of library e-books by dmhmr on Thursday September 02, 2021 @07:08PM (#28398481)

Libby and Overdrive are the same thing with different skins. Neither app is good but Overdrive is simpler (IMO) for reserving books and downloading them, so I stuck with Overdrive.

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Re:An app called Libby and the big business of library e-books by roland35 on Thursday September 02, 2021 @10:32AM (#28392541)

I believe you can use either. I recently downloaded Libby but I still see my holds in overdrive too.

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Re:An app called Libby and the big business of library e-books by fny on Thursday September 02, 2021 @11:23AM (#28393187)

It's the same company. Libby is a rebranded Overdrive.

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Re:An app called Libby and the big business of library e-books by postoak on Thursday September 02, 2021 @02:08PM (#28395355)

I use the Library Chrome Extension. If you look up a book on Amazon or some other book search sites it will add a info box about whether libraries that you have added have a book available (or all checked out) and the estimated wait and number of copies. You can add a bunch of libraries. Yes, it should be in the overdrive/libby apps/sites but this is the closest I've found to search many libraries.

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Re:An app called Libby and the big business of library e-books by williamsmj on Thursday September 02, 2021 @01:22PM (#28394781)

I don't disagree that Libby's UX for search/catalog is not great (and I'm with you on searching across libraries, but fwiw I find tags fine), but it's light years ahead of the competition for playback.

I treat audible as a last resort not because I want to avoid amazon or because I'm cheap (although both are true), but because it's so frustrating to use the app to, you know, listen to books.

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Re:An app called Libby and the big business of library e-books by TMWNN on Friday September 03, 2021 @01:57AM (#28400869)

>My biggest peeve is that I cannot simply look for a book across the different libraries I have access to. I have to select each one individually and repeat the search several times to find out that the book I am looking for is not available.

Overdrive.com searches across multiple libraries. (<https://np.reddit.com/r/books/comments/6uxca9/have_more_than...>)

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Re:An app called Libby and the big business of library e-books by rripken on Thursday September 02, 2021 @11:52AM (#28393618)

If the book isn't found at the library you are on I believe you do have to switch to other libraries until you find it. The most annoying part is when you are entering the title in the search box and it auto-completes the full title but then you issue the search and get back "No results".

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