I started my library career as employee #70 at OverDrive in 2008. First woman on the Support Team at an unknown startup in Cleveland. The boys were ripping CDs in the back for audiobooks; I was teaching librarians how to reset hidden Windows DRM so patrons could download WMA files to transfer to Windows Media Players.
The workflow was brutal: sign into the library, get redirected to OverDrive, then to Adobe Reader, then transfer to a third-party device with its own software. I remember the first time we got an ebook onto a Nook after a firmware update. We were so excited. We thought we were helping.
Those years changed me. The desperation in librarians' voices trying to help patrons who just wanted to read a book. The patrons who didn't understand why it was so hard when the technology was supposed to make it easier. I was the vendor and it was frustrating me.
I went to library school because I wanted to be the change I wanted to see in the world.
How I Met Sandusky Library
I was at Kent State, cranking through my MLIS so I could move up at OverDrive. They required a 100-hour practicum. Cleveland and Cuyahoga County were union shops with limited openings. I'd resigned myself to delaying graduation.
Then I saw a posting on the listserv. A director at a small library an hour away needed someone to help with technology. My ideal practicum. But the library closed at 8pm, limited Saturday hours. There was no way it could work with my schedule.
Late 2010. December 31 late. OverDrive was growing fast. My job was about to change everything.
Monday through Friday I was at OverDrive as a project manager, helping libraries set up their first ebook collections. Saturdays I was at Sandusky Library for my practicum.
Same week, both sides of the problem.
I helped build the scarcity and then sat with the patrons frustrated by it.
Within three months of my practicum, I was asked to sit down with a regular patron and help him download ebooks to his Kobo. The reference staff only referred to him as "the crusty old dude." For 2 hours I painfully looked for titles that were in ebook format at Borders but not at the library. I explained that publishers had different licenses and availability for content; even though it's digital, it was the complete opposite of instantly available and cheap.
Turns out he was chair of a local foundation. The library got $100,000.
Pure luck. But I was in the chair.
The Economics of Digital Scarcity
Here's what the library ebook market looked like from the inside:
The platform was built for single-system libraries. Consortiums were a nightmare of cataloging and lending rules. Then came Advantage, which let consortium members purchase titles for their own patrons. On paper, it looked generous. Libraries got "content credits" to offset first-year platform fees. Depending on size, you might get $2,500 to $5,000 to kick off your digital collection.
Sounds like a jackpot, right?
Do the math. If titles cost $100 for 26 checkouts, that $5,000 buys you 50 books. And not good ones. There were embargoes on bestsellers. Six months before you could purchase. So you were prepaying for content you couldn't access.
And year one platform fees were waived. Year two? Year three? Nobody talked about that part.
The libraries I worked with on Monday were the same libraries I sat with on Saturday during my practicum, trying to explain why the system I helped build couldn't give them what their patrons needed.
The Moment I Knew
There's a moment in every job where you see clearly what the business actually is.
For me, it was watching pricing models get introduced that I knew would squeeze libraries for years. The justification was always about sustainability, about paying authors, about the complexity of digital rights. Some of that was true. But the effect was artificial scarcity baked into the product.
I couldn't keep selling it.
I won a Library Journal Mover & Shaker award that year for digital literacy programs, eReader lending, and a foundation grant I'd helped secure. We'd purchased Nooks, loaded them with bestsellers we couldn't get through the platform, and lent the devices directly. When we noticed the streaming divide, we bought Roku boxes with WiFi hotspots and lent those too.
I realized I couldn't bridge the digital divide by myself. But I could find ways to give people options. The library was giving patrons their agency back.
Then leadership changed. Technology wasn't part of the new vision. I stuck around in libraries as an administrator but got restless missing the practitioner work.
The Pattern Repeats
Eventually I landed at a software company Baker & Taylor had acquired. Customer success this time, not support. Different game when you're wining and dining directors for contracts.
I watched a sales director buy Johnnie Walker Blue Label at Elway's Steak House. Fifty bucks a pour, after a three-course meal for ten. The contract increased 7% automatically, annually. The dinner was a rounding error.
Every time. Find something libraries need. Wrap it in a subscription. Build in switching costs. Extract until the host dies or someone builds an alternative.
OverDrive building artificial scarcity into digital books. OCLC suing over MARC records like metadata is a profit center. Baker & Taylor ignoring practitioners until the whole thing collapsed.
Same pattern. Different names.
I've seen it enough times that I can recognize it before it finishes playing out. That's not wisdom. It's scar tissue.