On Wednesday, Nov. 29, Fairfax County Public Library (FCPL) reached a major milestone, 3 million digital loans for 2023. This is the first time the library system has exceeded the threshold since introducing OverDrive, FCPL’s online digital catalog provider, in 2006. Sabriel, the award-winning young adult fantasy novel by New York Times’ bestselling author Garth Nix, was the book that helped FCPL surpass the milestone.
With this achievement, FCPL joins an elite group of library systems around the world. In 2022, only 37 libraries who utilize OverDrive hit the 3 million total digital checkout mark in a single year. To add a little more perspective, OverDrive’s website reports that they serve “more than 88,000 libraries and schools in 109 countries with the industry’s largest digital catalog of ebooks, audiobooks, video and other content.” So, this is no small feat!
FCPL utilizes Overdrive and its mobile application Libby to provide 24/7 access to their digital collection, which includes eBooks, eAudiobooks and eMagazines. Readers can now access titles whenever and wherever they want using any major device, making digital materials more popular than ever.
While reader interest in digital materials has been increasing steadily over the years, FCPL has seen exponential growth since 2019, with circulation more than doubling in the three-and-a-half-year period. To meet this demand, FCPL collections staff has been hard at work expanding the digital collection to include more titles, as well as additional licenses for popular titles, with the goal of reducing long wait times. This work has been supported in recent years by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, who recently approved a $300,000 increase to the library’s collection budget, as well as the Friends of Reston Regional Library, who donated $200,000 to the library in June of 2022 to support the development of both the digital and physical collections.
FCPL’s digital collection is available for free to anyone who has a Fairfax County Public Library card. More information about the collection and how to access it can be found here.