Why this library e-book app is turning to AI

With authors battling top AI companies and generated e-books flooding platforms, the book world’s relationship with GenAI has been decidedly rocky.

But OverDrive CEO Steve Potash argues that AI recommendations and other technology can help promote libraries at a time when literacy is in trouble. OverDrive works with more than 90% of libraries in North America and operates the e-book app Libby, the video streaming platform Kanopy, and school library app Sora (no relation to the OpenAI video tool).

OverDrive recently introduced an AI-powered book recommendation feature called Inspire Me that allows readers to find books through prompts or past saved titles. Potash said it’s a way to “explore the nooks and crannies of these fabulous collections our public libraries have invested in.” But it has garnered mixed reactions from AI-averse Libby power users.

Inspire Me isn’t the end of OverDrive’s AI ambitions; Potash wants it to eventually better match users to content across its platforms.

The founder and CEO of nearly four decades talked to us about how libraries are using technology to find new readers and the threats facing these institutions and reading more broadly.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

With Libby, a lot of people who like books and like reading, they’re maybe more suspicious of AI with these author lawsuits and copyright issues. How were you making sure that you were careful about wading into AI? Did you anticipate pushback?

As a certified B Corp, we are accountable to high standards of transparency and business practice, and protecting the planet, and worthy of winning the trust of government funding, and public institutions, like the New York Public Library and Library of Congress.

OverDrive is invested with publishers, with trying to research the future of literacy and overcome reading challenges, and pushing the science of reading to expand the value of access to spoken words or words on the screen. So everything we do is permission-based.

The AI pertaining to this Inspire Me service…is an OverDrive-contained LLM that is only utilizing the cataloging information, metadata, and other controlled data points that we have. And we add value to the catalogs of all of our libraries, or how we enhance the information around every book.

We had a long history of trust, consumer engagement, discovery, and engagement with readers to find their next great read. But with Inspire Me, we’re using all of that 25 years of internal cataloging data that enhances the books.

We should mention it’s purely opt-in. You’re not using it unless you decide you want to play with it. So it is an optional, whimsical way to [search]. I’ll tell you what’s most encouraging to me: Not only are the people that are activating it using it, they’re borrowing books, and we’re analyzing the books that they’re borrowing from the inspirations. And these are books that, before Inspire Me, were not circulating.

The bottom line is, Dan Brown’s Secret of Secrets doesn’t need any help. The books that are being circulated from Inspire Me, they’re now unbelievably relevant books for these readers that are available now. And they weren’t coming up as you were browsing, or they weren’t coming up in the higher search results. Or you’ve never heard of this author, or it’s a debut author. So that’s what’s been really exciting. And this is where the libraries are also really pumped.

From the library perspective, when we added into Libby Notify Me and Deep Search [features that allow people to search for and request books that aren’t in a library’s catalog,] it added a whole new dimension for librarians to say, “If we’re going to build the digital circulating collection of our Libby or digital library, we can now ask our readers for what they want.”

So when you think about that, what’s the next step? How do we get folks to discover things that the library already vetted, already purchased for the catalog? It’s in their whole worldwide discovery in the libraries, on their public service in Libby. But it’s not getting used.

And you’re starting to see evidence that is happening? That users are finding lesser known books?

Absolutely. First of all, we’re only showing books that are not on The New York Times best-selling list or being featured on Oprah. We’re only showing books that are available now. All The New York Times bestsellers, they’re all checked out, and there’s a wait list.

After we have the first few million users regularly using [Inspire Me], we’ll be circling back with our library advisors and saying, “How are we doing?”

I was reading about a presentation you gave at a publishing conference where you talked about how reading has been in decline for decades—

I have data that should scare every author and publisher. It’s a consumer lifestyle product that needs to reverse its decline in relevance. And I’m offering them examples and strategies that I know will work.

You said it’s competing more with short-form video. You’ve also talked about library funding cuts and frustrations with various book censorship actions. How do you stay optimistic amid all this?

What makes me optimistic is…our chief marketing officer I hired and recruited. I said, “I want you to bring our nation’s public libraries 25 million new library card holders. Go get ’em.” She says, “OK, well, we have to grow the audience for the book product. I have to go after non-book users.” Because, let’s face it, the librarians, the authors, the publishers, the booksellers, Goodreads, everybody knows how to sell to that avid adult fiction reader. We know how to reach them. They’re great. But what are they doing to grow the audience for people that don’t use books? And books are used for so many purposes.

So my chief marketing officer said, “We’re going to go after millennial males. We’re going to go after sports fans.” And she started going after [those] demographics. We announced last fall a three-year partnership as the literacy partner to the LA Lakers. So now at the Lakers games, Libby is everywhere. I have access to the Lakers. We’re doing it with the Los Angeles Public Library. They’re taking branches and turning into the Lakers literacy lounge, brought to you by Lakers and Libby…I’m talking to Shaq [O’Neal] and Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar].

How did you identify those as the biggest potential demographics?

We ask our librarians, “Who do you want to reach?” They do demographics; they have heat maps of their service area, broken down by street, by ZIP code. They know who’s coming in the branches, who’s their physical user, who’s their digital user. In every community, [they’re] trying to have relevance, to keep their budgets, to keep their staffing, to keep their branches open. Many of these states are under attack, either [by] the executive orders and the [cuts to the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences] and Congress.

After Covid, when I ask directors, “How can we help?” They say, “We’ve got to get foot traffic back to our central library.”….In some [geographic areas], we are doing very targeted tests. You’re in a community that might have a military base. How do we become relevant to them? Or it’s a college town, and they want to supplement [education]. So it’s asking each individual librarian, “Who is it you’re trying to either bring in, or who is an underserved portion of your community that we might help?”

How are you looking at expanding your use of AI?

AI is helping us integrate all forms of media around things that readers are interested in…One of the things that’s in flight right now is we are integrating all of the information about [Kanopy’s] 30,000-plus feature films, documentary, TV shows, foreign films, [and] children’s read-along storybooks into the catalog that also contains all the world’s greatest literature, books, e-books, audiobooks, comics, manga. Now we’re adding all the video.

So just imagine when you say, “I’m interested in this.”...The future state of AI [in Libby] is going to be, “I’m interested in medieval whatever, the renaissance faire.” I want to then all of a sudden have the library, have Libby, have the library catalog show me everything that I’m looking for. And it could be a film, it could be audio, it could be a graphic novel, a comic, manga, it could be a book. Heck, we’re going to be integrating all forms of the work in print, hard goods, digital, video, streaming.

[Right now,] Inspire Me is looking at just a subset of the library’s collection based around e-books and audiobooks available for you to borrow in Libby. The next step will be, what if it was every book? What if it was every book, every magazine, every newspaper, every video?