Every entry in the catalog, newest first.
Libby is a vendor product, not a public library. A short guide to who owns it, why the ownership record matters, and what to ask before renewal.
EbooksOwnershipVendors
Why a library ebook can cost more than the consumer copy and still expire. A short guide to comparing licenses, terms, and your own invoices.
Ebooks
At this year's Library Insights Summit, a librarian named the reason small-press books rarely make it onto library shelves. The diagnosis was sharp. The advice stopped one step short of it.
Library systems
71 sourced events tracing how library ebook access went from Project Gutenberg to a private-equity monopoly: OverDrive's rise, the publisher licensing wars, KKR's buyout, and Baker & Taylor's 2026 collapse.
Ebooks
Part of the Digital lending record
Move the sliders and see what your library actually pays to lend a digital book. The interactive companion to Follow the Dollar, with every number sourced.
Ebooks
Part of the Digital lending record
OverDrive built a new product out of how reading happens inside Libby and Sora.
EbooksVendors
Part of the Digital lending record
Libraries shouldn't be run like businesses. But a library leader who can't read a budget or spot the corporate playbook loses the fight for library values to whoever in the room can.
Ebooks
Part of the Digital lending record
Two ways to gut a public library, the honest kind and the kind that calls itself efficiency. Libraries measure life events. Businesses count widgets. Here's what happens when you confuse the two.
Ebooks
Part of the Digital lending record
KKR and Francisco Partners run most of the library-tech vendor stack. DC just passed a bill that would limit what they charge, unanimously. The trigger clause means it stays dormant until ten states join.
EbooksOwnership
Part of the Libby, ownership & ebook terms
Seven years of library-worker reddit, read against 150 years of structural choices. The exit profile is a pattern, and the pattern has a history.
Ebooks
Part of the Digital lending record
The thing that makes librarians irreplaceable is not what they know. It's what they decide you should encounter.
Ebooks
Part of the Digital lending record
A patron asks why she can't save the ebook she borrowed from Libby. You explain it disappears when the lending period ends. She asks why. You realize you've never fully explained why. Here's the answer.
Ebooks
Part of the Digital lending record
BTCat is gone. The alternatives cost too much or do too little. So I'm building one. Open source, modern stack, designed for how catalogers actually work.
Library systems
Twenty years of watching libraries depend on software they can't shape. l/30 is what happens when you stop waiting.
Library systems