Libby, an app available through libraries across Canada, meets readers where they are: on their phones. Since its debut in 2017, it has combined the best of e-commerce and digital book design in a space where the reads are, appropriately, free. Sign in with your library card once and — boom! You can read or listen to audiobooks, browse curated collections and search for particular titles, place holds, and get notifications when items show up on your virtual hold shelf. You can change text size and colour to suit your needs, and you can bookmark your page across devices.
Though it’s not yet well known — many users still rely on its clunkier predecessor, OverDrive — Libby gives people all sorts of reasons to read on their phones or tablets. Maybe they’re commuting and prefer audiobooks. Maybe their arms are full. Maybe it’s dark, and turning on a light would disturb a sleeping companion — infant or adult. If you can’t get to your local branch to pick up a loan...
Jessica Duffin Wolfe is a professor of digital communications and journalism at Humber College, in Toronto. She wrote The Routledge Introduction to Canadian Literature and Illness, out this month.
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