Saving moolah on awesome reads!
Happy National Library Week! For bookworms, this week is the chance to say thank you to the awesome institution that is the public library system and the librarians who run them! As someone who grew up in a country where the public library system isn’t as developed as the US, I cannot begin to express my thanks to this system.
I am one bookworm that uses the LA Public Library System to it’s fullest. I fact, LAPL has saved me a lot of money! I regularly borrow ebooks and audiobooks digitally and never have to step into a brick and mortar building! I know that’s no fun, but with my busy schedule, borrowing books digitally is the only way to go.
But how do I borrow books from the library? I mostly use three apps to borrow books – Overdrive, Libby, and Kindle. For ebooks, I send them over to the Kindle app, so I am not going to talk about that. For now, I will share the two library apps I use regularly for listening to audiobooks.
The Overdrive App
I used to use the Overdrive app 100% of the time, but I found another app that has more features that I prefer. I still keep the Overdrive app because there are certain features that I also love.
This is how your digital bookshelf will look like. You are able to scroll down to see all the other audiobooks that you have borrowed.
When you click the title, you will be able to access the play interface.
One of the features that I love about Overdrive is the option to change the playback speeds! Sometimes, a narrator’s tempo just doesn’t work for me so I usually slow it down to 0.8x speed or increase it to 1.2x speed. This normally fixes the annoying narrator that speaks really slow to my taste but does not distort the narrator’s voice. It just speeds it up a bit.
Another feature that I love is the volume boost. For some reason, some of the audiobooks need a volume boost! Even when I am using headphones, it still needs a little boost. Or, maybe I should clean my ears? ☺
The best feature that I love from Overdrive is the ability to REQUEST books that the library can purchase! For this example, I picked Sarah MacLean’s new book Wicked and the Wallflower. As you can see, this book isn’t available to borrow yet (it’s not released yet and the library hasn’t purchased a copy yet). After you scroll down to the very bottom of your screen, you can see the Recommend option. This lets the library know that there is a reader interested in the book.
After you recommend a title, you will be able to immediately add yourself to the queue so that when the book has been purchased, you will receive an email AND also be in line to check out the book! Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!
The Libby App
Libby is also made by Overdrive, but it has a few extra special features that I absolutely CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT!
One is the ability to see the full list of books in the series that are available to borrow!
As you can see, this view shows all the 7 books available in The Night Huntress series. The small Libby icon shows that the book is not available for immediate borrowing. This basically means someone else checked out their copy or copies of it.
There is also that nifty feature showing that the audiobook you are currently looking at is also available in another format! How awesome is that?!
Oh, and did I mention that they will also show how long your wait is in the queue?! This is really helpful when you are reading a series!
This is how the Libby playback looks like. Although it has fewer options like the Overdrive app, I love the feature where you can click on the time and change it to your preference. Since I post on Goodreads, I tend to used the percentage to mark my place when making comments. You can do that with Libby without doing math! Yeah, I hate math so this is super helpful to me.
A neat feature that I also love is that you can see if the book was sent to your Kindle app! One of the things that I hated was clicking on the extra step to see if I already sent the ebook to my Kindle. This is another nice feature that I love about the app.
Overall Thoughts
While I love both apps, I have been using Libby more often than the old Overdrive app. I personally love the additional features that I can’t get in the old app.
I also don’t have problems switching to Overdrive when the need arises, like when I need to enhance the sound or increase the reading speed since both are not available on the Libby app.
I have not used Hooplah to it’s fullest sense since this is the app where you can borrow graphic novels and comics and I haven’t really been reading a lot of those.
Do you borrow books from your public library? How extensive are the books available?
Do you use an app to borrow books and audiobooks digitally? What do you use?
If you have used Overdrive, Libby, or Hooplah which do you think is the best one?
shared on
Leave a Reply