What are you (e)reading, Toronto? New site shows a live feed from the city that reads the most library ebooks
Last week you may have heard that you live in the most well-read city in the world according to our ebook lending service. In 2016, Torontonians downloaded over 3 million ebooks and eaudiobooks from OverDrive.
If you like data and want to be transfixed by the Toronto reading zeitgeist, we have something special for you.
The Toronto Public Library Ebook Dashboard* shows you which books are being placed on hold and checked out right now, along with running totals for the numbers of checkouts and holds today, this month, this year, and since we started using OverDrive in 2007. At the time of writing, you have read over 12.6 million ebooks from our OverDrive service, making Toronto one of the most literate, engaged, and well-read cities on earth! (Well, that's how we're interpreting this. 😉)
*Please note: this dashboard is in Beta and at times may be unavailable.
Anyway, grab a coffee and enjoy seeing the numbers tick up. Maybe you’ll stumble on some new reading ideas as you gaze at the steady stream of books your fellow Torontonians are borrowing.
Looking for more inspiration? Check out the library website search dashboard, a live stream of the searches being done on the library’s website.
11 thoughts on “What are you (e)reading, Toronto? New site shows a live feed from the city that reads the most library ebooks”
Hello, thanks for all the work you do.
I have a question about ebook acquisitions – I’ve recommended two ebooks for purchase which were almost immediately obtained by the library (thanks for that as well by the way). This experience surprised me as I assumed I’d be waiting for at least a week or two.
What I’d like to know is, how does the Toronto Public Library determine which ebook recommendations to listen to?
Hi Jesse, someone from our collections development department will contact you. Thanks!
Hi Jesse,
I am glad to hear that your recommended titles were purchased in a timely manner. We generally run the Recommend to Library (RTL) report in OverDrive on a weekly basis and process the all the requests from that report the same day.
We do get a lot of requests and that is why we have a limit of one request per person every 30 days. It is the fairest way to ensure that every OverDrive user has a chance to make a recommendation if they wish. Your recommendation has a very good chance of being accepted if it is not prohibitively expensive, fills a gap in our collection or has wide appeal.
We welcome title suggestions and consider them an integral part of our selection process. Our collection is greatly enhanced by these recommendations!
To learn more about RTL, check out our eBook FAQ here:
http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/books-video-music/downloads-ebooks/ebooks-faq.jsp#purchase
Happy Reading!
Maria
Love this idea!
Wish there was a way to see summary statistics rather than just the live dashboard. Like the top 10 titles people wanted today/this week/month, etc.
Hi Maria, thank you for the answer and thank you for your work!
Would be great if books could be downloaded onto kindle!!
Hi,
Just curious to know what is the technology being used to render the magazines on most devices regardless of the OS in use>
Regards,
Krish
Hi Krish, do you mean reading magazines through TPL’s Zinio magazine service?
Question there is a J.J. Murray book Original Love that can only be read online using ebook/Overdrive but the format is not compatible with peoples (mine) devices. Is there any way that this can be fixed. I tried using both my phone and laptop. The library staff also wasn’t able to assist.
Hi Camile,
It sounds like you have checked out the PDF version of the title. This format is likely not compatible with your device, so you will need to place a hold on the ePub format. Sorry for the confusion!
Hi Nav,
I have passed on your excellent suggestion to OverDrive who developed the Dashboard for TPL.