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Since libraries closed in March, more people than ever have been borrowing ebooks. As you can imagine, this is making the waitlists for popular titles longer than they used to be.

We're buying some more ebooks to help shorten wait times – but the cost of one ebook license is, on average, four to six times higher than the cost of the same title in print. While we're putting more of our budget into ebooks, it's just never going to be enough to meet demand.

So we’re going to follow the lead of many other North American libraries, and change the default loan period for ebooks from three weeks to two weeks. This should shorten wait times for ebooks by a lot, and for many readers – including kids, and avid readers who devour a book every week – it won't cause any problems. 

But we also know that there are many readers who are still going to need a three-week loan period to finish a book. And if you're one of them, we have good news: you can change your own default loan period back to three weeks, even after we've made the change. 

How To Change Your Default Loan Period

When you borrow an ebook (or a digital magazine, or video) on OverDrive, just after you select the "Borrow" button, you'll be taken to a screen with this message: "Borrow for 14 days."

If you select the words "14 days", a menu will pop up, offering 7-, 14- or 21-day loan periods. Select "21 days", and your default loan period will change – not just for this book, but for any books you borrow afterwards. 

Here's how it looks in the Libby app – select the words "14 days" to change your loan period:

Of course, you can select a seven-day loan period if you're a fast reader, and you can still return ebooks early when you're finished with them, to help shorten wait times for everyone. 

And if you'd like to contact publishers to ask for fair ebook pricing for libraries, we certainly wouldn't mind.