04-JUN-2026 - Upcoming Changes to OverDrive API Tokens

Throughout this year, we’ll be preparing for a comprehensive update to our systems that manage content ownership, availability, and circulation. As a partner who integrates with these systems via our public APIs, we’ll inform you of upcoming changes and the expected impact on your integration.

The first change will be updates to our API tokens. The values of tokens will change, but not the process for acquiring them.

Our integration environment has already been updated to deliver the new tokens for our integration libraries. See below for more details about token updates in our production environment.

Library collection tokens

The values of library collection tokens will change for all customers on June 29, 2026.

To maintain continuity, OverDrive APIs will support both the old and new values for library collection tokens through September 2026.  Please begin refreshing tokens as soon as possible and on a monthly basis going forward.

User (patron) authentication tokens

The values of user/patron tokens will change for all users on June 29, 2026. We don’t anticipate any impact from this change, since user tokens must be refreshed after one hour to validate the user’s access. If your integration allows checkouts, holds, returns, etc., you're already refreshing user tokens every time a user wants to access OverDrive content, so you should start receiving the new token values as they refresh.

Client authentication tokens

Client tokens will be unaffected by this update.

If you have any questions or concerns, contact support. 

As always, thanks for being an OverDrive API partner,

The OverDrive API team