OverDrive will soon launch a feature for its new Libby ebook and audiobook app that will enable new patrons to sign up for a library card using their smartphone or tablet, confirming residency without requiring a visit to a library branch, engineer Michael Haren announced during an August 4 presentation at Digipalooza, the company’s biennial user group meeting in Cleveland, OH.
“We know that many of you have done well with online forms in your libraries, and many of you turn those forms around quickly to get folks cards in a matter of hours or days,” Haren said. “But Steve [Potash, OverDrive President and CEO] gave us a challenge. He said ‘30 seconds. I need to ride up the elevator with a new patron and have a card for them by the time we get to the top.’”
While the new library card sign-up feature will soon become a standard component of Libby, Potash noted during the Q&A that it is “obviously going to be opt-in” for libraries that prefer not to enable it.
Launched in a pilot test last week at the San Antonio Public Library, TX; Cuyahoga County Public Library, OH; Pioneer Library System, OK; and Toledo Lucas County Public Library, OH, the app confirms a new patron’s residency and eligibility for a library card by checking the mobile phone number used to request the card against a national database of addresses associated with each number.
In a live demo, Haren, who is a resident of Cuyahoga County’s service area, showed the audience how the app begins the signup process requesting a potential new patron’s name and mobile phone number. The system then texts a code to that mobile number to confirm that the owner of the phone is requesting the card. Once the code is submitted, “our service goes out and uses an identity verification tool, just like banks do, to pull back an address,” he explained. “If that address matches the…service area provided by the library, then they give me a card, and I can read [ebooks and other digital content] right now…. Imagine how simple this will be for the millions of people who don’t have library cards.”
Read the full article:
“OverDrive’s Libby App to Include Remote Library Card Signup.” Matt Enis, Library Journal, August 9, 2017.