Every entry in the catalog, newest first.
Most patrons think the app is the library. It isn't. It's OverDrive, and OverDrive is owned by KKR, the same private-equity firm that owns Simon & Schuster. One owner, sitting on both sides of the deal. Disclosure: I worked at OverDrive from 2008 to 2011.
Trace one ebook from library budget to private equity profit. The 4x markup, the expiration trap, the platform cut, and where every dollar actually goes. Evidence-based pricing analysis with action playbook.
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.
70+ 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.
The complete history of how library ebook access went from open promise (1971) to private equity monopoly (2026). Names the decisions, amounts, and what happens next.
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.
What Librar Labs is, who built it, where the money came from, and what schools should know before signing a contract. The documented criticism here originates with Elissa Malespina; this piece follows her work.
OverDrive built a new product out of how reading happens inside Libby and Sora.
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. Take the discipline. Refuse the values.
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, with receipts.
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.
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.
The thing that makes librarians irreplaceable is not what they know. It's what they decide you should encounter.
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.
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.
The patron comparison exists everywhere. Here's the one for staff: cost models, collection control, contract terms, and what you actually give up with each.
Twenty years of watching libraries depend on software they can't shape. l/30 is what happens when you stop waiting.