Last week, our library system hit 20 million all-time digital checkouts!
Our division director alerted us on Teams when there were 180 to go, so we spent the next 15 minutes watching the dashboard, speculating which book would be the 20 millionth checkout. The lucky book was Crying in H Mart, a super popular title I should read one of these days.
And that reminded me to tell people about some mesmerizing fun to be had on your library’s Overdrive dashboard page, if they check out ebooks with Overdrive. You can find a link to ours at the bottom of the ebooks page with the words Check out what’s being checked out right now.
What this page does is rotate through the covers of books being digitally checked out or placed on hold. And you can watch the numbers change. We’re way past 20 million now, but will we hit 3 million checkouts in 2023? It seems likely.
But the other thing you can get from this is ideas for what to read next. Spy on what other people are reading in real time! For example, I had no idea that we have digital access to a magazine called The Knitter until I saw it come across this dashboard. And it’s fun to watch. Though funny thing — titles don’t go by as quickly when it’s late at night. But they do still move.
Happy reading!