Libby’s Unlimited Hold Delays—Why, Oh Why?

The ReadersFirst Working Group has been sent notice of an OverDrive “feature” harming its service to a library. Are you having a similar experience?

It involves the option to delay holds repeatedly.

On high-demand popular titles—even older ones--such as Kristin Hannah's The Women, repeated customer delaying of holds is creating havoc with checkouts.

Here is how repeated delaying of holds is affecting one of that library’s most high-demand titles, in fact, The Women.

Before the holidays that 40% of holdable copies were not checked out. It was decided to give all the holdable copies “Lucky Day” status so that they might circulate more readily. We’re talking hundreds of copies for this library, not one or ten. It’s a big investment that this library, and indeed all libraries that get multiple copies, would like to see being read rather than sitting idle.

The tactic worked. For three weeks over the holidays, nearly every copy was out all the time. Never more than a couple were available, and those were snapped up quickly.

Recently it was decided to find out what would happen if EVERY copy was made holdable again, hoping at least some copies would move beyond the chronic "delayers" to people who wanted to accept their holds. Even though this title came out nearly a year ago, quite a few people have been at the head of the line for some time, not delaying their holds while others do.

As of today, only about 60% of 300 ebooks were checked out and 55% of 200 audiobooks. New holds are still being placed on both formats all the time, but the copies are slow to trickle down because of the huge number of delayed holds.

This situation is intolerable for the library. Short of buying 2000+ copies, the holds further down the line cannot be filled as long as people near the top keep playing ping-pong with available copies. It looks like it is time to go back to “Lucky Day” copies again, even though people waiting who want the book will be disadvantaged. At least the titles will circulate.

Meanwhile, this is a metered title. The expiration date creeps closer and closer, meaning the library will have to license many, many titles again. Not good!

Our understanding at RF is that the ability to delay holds indefinitely was implemented by OverDrive without customer participation. It is detrimental to our service. Was it put into place so that libraries would feel the need to load up still more on possibly expensive titles? That seems to be the effect it is having.

If you are having an experience like this, perhaps it’s time to drop OverDrive a note to let them know you’d like to see a change.