03-AUG-2020 - OverDrive Acquires RBdigital

OverDrive recently acquired RBmedia’s library business, RBdigital, in North America, UK, and Australia. This means that all RBdigital customers and titles will be transferred to OverDrive. When the transfer is complete, the RBdigital platform and app will be retired.

As a result, you may see new items in your OverDrive catalog and additional copies of existing items. RBdigital customers who are new to OverDrive or who don’t have OverDrive APIs yet may also reach out to you about enabling their OverDrive integration.

The initial content transfer from RBdigital to OverDrive will include ebooks and audiobooks only. This content will behave just like OverDrive content and won’t require any changes to OverDrive APIs. Information about other RBdigital content (such as video, magazines, and comics) will be coming later.

After RBdigital content transfers to OverDrive, users can access their checkouts on the RBdigital platform until the end of the lending period. If they’d like to access a title after the lending period, they’ll need to borrow it again or place a hold through OverDrive. RBdigital holds won’t be transferred and will need to be placed again with OverDrive.

Content transfers for some US customers will begin in August. Libraries will receive details about their transfer two weeks before the scheduled date (for existing OverDrive partners) or one month before the scheduled date (for new OverDrive partners).

If you have any questions or concerns about the RBdigital content transfer, please submit them to our support team through the Developer Portal.

As always, thanks for being an OverDrive API partner,

The OverDrive API team