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OverDrive lending models

Publishers determine how digital content circulates in libraries and schools. At OverDrive, there are several lending models that libraries and schools can purchase digital content in, as set by the publisher: One Copy/One User, Metered Access, Cost Per Circ, and Subscriptions.

One Copy/One User

One Copy/One User titles can be checked out by one person at a time and never expire from a library or school's collection. Titles in this lending model are most similar to a library's physical book collection.

Metered Access

Metered Access (MA) titles expire from a library or school's collection after a certain amount of time or number of checkouts.

There are four types of Metered Access titles:

  • Metered Access: by time (one user). These expire after a certain amount of time and can be borrowed by one user at a time.
  • Metered Access: by checkout (one user). These expire after a certain number of checkouts and can be borrowed by one user at a time.
  • Metered Access: by checkout (concurrent users). These expire after a certain number of checkouts and can be borrowed by multiple users at the same time.
  • Metered Access: by earlier of x time or y checkouts (one user). These expire after a certain amount of time or number of checkouts, whichever comes first, and can be borrowed by one user at a time.

Note: Libby, Sora, and OverDrive websites don't display the number of remaining checkouts or the remaining time for Metered Access titles. This is a hidden number that libraries and schools manage. That way, they can keep track of how many licenses are left for a particular title and replenish them based on their own needs.

Cost Per Circ

With the Cost Per Circ (CPC) lending model, a library or school adds titles to their collection and pays when their users borrow those titles.

CPC titles can be borrowed simultaneously by an unlimited number of people.

Libraries and schools manage how much they spend by setting monthly budgets and a per-user checkout limit for this lending model. Once the budget is met, no users can borrow CPC titles until the following month. Once a user hits their checkout limit for CPC titles, they won't be able to borrow a CPC title until the following month. (Titles in other lending models aren't impacted by this limit.)

Subscriptions

Subscription titles can be borrowed by an unlimited number of users at the same time, and most expire from a library or school's collection after a certain amount of time (for example, after one year). Libraries and schools purchase Subscriptions from a publisher for a flat fee.

Note: All magazines from OverDrive are Subscription titles.

Lending models in the OverDrive APIs

A title's lending model affects the OverDrive APIs (and your implementation) in a couple ways:

  • You'll need to call the Library Availability API regularly to determine whether a title can be borrowed or placed on hold and to ensure that the title hasn't expired from the collection.
  • If your implementation uses the Circulation APIs, you'll need to support both a "borrow" (via the Checkouts API) and "place hold" (via the Holds API) flow in your implementation.