If You Hate Waiting

 

9-27-2024

I heart Libby. I have hearted Libby since it was OverDrive, I had a Kindle with the OverDrive app that allowed easy downloading, and Emma had me waiting in her dance studio lobby multiple nights a week for rehearsals to finish. Now it is Libby, Amazon makes downloads to my Paperwhite annoying, and Emma is enjoying her freshman year of college four hours away. I still heart Libby.

A pandemic and worldwide shut later and a large number of my fellow library card holders also love Libby. Testified to by the wait times of popular titles.

The other day I was researching the likelihood of a patron checking out a copy of Kristin Hannah’s The Women in time for her private book club at the end of October. Knowing that a week earlier we’d checked the holds list for the print copy and that it was over 300 patrons strong, I turned to electronic copies. The hold lists on Libby’s 127 book copies and 119 audio book copies were both estimated to take over six months.

I don’t heart Hoopla. We provide access, but unlike Libby which allows us to pay for and maintain access to a book, Hoopla charges for every use. That’s why patrons are limited to the number of checkouts per month and the have a price cap on accessible items. However, in cases like this when other venues are not available, it’s my next suggestion. Not available there at all.

After we ended the call, I looked into physical audiobook copies and realized we already owned The Women on Playaway. To top it all off, it was on our shelves.

The moral of the story is twofold.

First, physical copies are a viable alternative to the long waits. A group of directors from Prairie Lakes Library System are currently meeting to explore the best way to reduce these waits, but the simple truth is libraries don’t have the budget to purchase enough copies to do so. Being open to physical copies can reduce the wait for some titles.

Second, Playaways are often overlooked. For those who don’t know, they are small devices that contain the MP3 copy of a book and can be played on its own unlike CDs. The downside as compared to Libby and using a tablet or smart phone is that a Playaway has neither speakers nor Bluetooth capabilities. They have a 3.5 mm port for headphones. Yes, the kind with a wire. However, the port also allows for an FM transmitter for use with a radio or a cable that plugs into a car or speaker’s auxiliary port.

I would be happy to demonstrate any of those technologies for the next person to ask for The Women or any other Playaway.

Reading Now: A Man of Two Faces by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Twilight by Stephanie Meyer (PBS Great America Reads title)

Listening to Now: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin