12-OCT-2016 - Introducing the New OverDrive Website and Updates to MARC 856

OverDrive API Partners,

As you may know, the OverDrive team has been working hard on many improvements to the web experience for our libraries and their users. We're proud to announce that many more of our libraries will launch these new websites over the next several months.

For the most part, this change should be transparent for existing API integrations. However, during this transition, we are changing the URL syntax for library websites.

Beginning on 12-OCT-2016, this new URL syntax will begin to appear in the 856 MARC record field for all OverDrive collections . Any API integrations currently using MARC 856 to retrieve reserveIDs (for checkouts, holds, etc.) will find them in MARC 037 instead. Visit this page for more information about retrieving reserveIDs from MARC records.

Please note that all existing links (based on the old URL syntax) will still work and automatically redirect to the correct OverDrive website. 

As an example, previously, a URL for a title’s details page would use the reserveID and be structured like: http://tulsa.lib.overdrive.com/ContentDetails.htm?id=AF5CAA07-E4D3-4A72-ADE3-644687FEA48E. Beginning today, updated URLs for a title’s details page can be constructed using a collection's websiteID and a title’s crossRefID instead: http://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=167&titleID=1214960.

Unlike the reserveID, the crossRefID in the new URL syntax cannot be used to request checkouts, holds, etc. We encourage partners to begin using MARC 037 to retrieve reserveIDs immediately because the updated URL syntax will make it impossible to extract reserveIDs consistently and reliably for many (if not all) records.

For more information on how to use the new URL syntax, construct OverDrive website URLs, and embed samples, see our previous post about the crossRefID.

Thanks for being an OverDrive API Partner,

-The OverDrive API Team