Overdrive serves more than 76,000 libraries in 94 countries. We read in Giornale de lla libreria that the Overdrive figures for 2021 testify to the extraordinary vitality of this type of service:

in the last year a record of 506 million digital library loans was set between electronic books, audiobooks and magazines, an increase of 16 % compared to 2020, that follows the growth of 33% in 2020 compared to 2019 and 20% in 2019 compared to 2018.

The pandemic

Behind similar figures is, of course, the pandemic, but such an explanation is not enough: in 2019 we did not know what the coronavirus was, and in 2021 schools, libraries and bookshops were still able to benefit from more openings than in the previous year. The most convincing explanation is the simplest: library lending is becoming an increasingly popular service around the world, and its growth - no doubt fueled by closures and related phenomena - can be seen as structural.

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