After a hiatus of less than two months, our awareness- spreading, 74-foot, 18-wheel tractor-trailer is dusted off, prettied up, outfitted with some new technology and headed to the left coast! The Digital Bookmobile is back on the prowl and this time we’re following the sun, giving patrons in warmer climates a chance to experience eBooks in an entirely new and exciting way. So far, there are more than 20 stops over the next several weeks in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada, with many
more to come!

The Digital Bookmobile provides visitors the opportunity to interact with several touch-screen workstations, view video tutorials on the local library’s OverDrive service, as well as experiment in our recently upgraded Gadget Gallery, which now houses a Samsung Galaxy Tab™, Kindle Fire, Sony Reader Wi-Fi®, SanDisk Sansa®, Creative Zen®, Barnes & Noble Nook™, iPod touch®, plus Blackberry® and Windows
Phone smartphones.

This hybrid of entertainment and education has helped OverDrive partner libraries reach out to their communities and introduce the eBook service they provide to their patrons and we are thrilled to be a part of the excitement it creates around the library!

Look out for the Digital Bookmobile coming to a library near you by checking our calendar, plus connect with us on Twitter and Facebook. If you are interested in hosting a Digital Bookmobile event, contact us at events@digitalbookmobile.com.

Jason Sockel is a Collection Development Associate at OverDrive.

I wouldn’t say I’m a sucker for romance, but I’m definitely okay with it. I don’t expect anyone to write my name in the sky but it isn’t like I’m going to throw a fit if someone does either. In all honesty I’d probably
cry like the emotionally charged human being that I am. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a little love
in your life, ladies! Adam say what you want to appease the boys, because yes the holiday itself might be a
bit of a burden on their wallets, but c’mon fellas surprise us. Here are some stunning examples of gentlemen
getting it right! Go ahead girls, swoon away…

(Just in case, it’s C-H-R-I-S-T-I-N-A for any sky writers out there.)

The Notebook By Nicholas Sparks: Because you cannot talk about love and literature without talking about The Notebook. It’s the real kind of true love, the kind with heartache and obstacles, the kind that makes the moment we’re all holding our breath for that much more beautiful—when our duo finally finally get together.

Practical Magic By Alice Hoffman: The Owens sisters know a thing or two about throwing salt over the shoulder to ward off bad spirits, herbs to cast out an enemy, and demon exorcism but nothing about relationships. One is as reckless as a tornado, falling in love whenever she can. The other casts a spell so that she’ll never have to know the true insanity of it. Through their tragedies, their passion and maybe a little bit of magic love finds them in miraculous ways.

A Thousand Splendid Suns By Khaled Hosseini: It’s a staggering love story, spanning decades in a war torn country with more heartache then I could stand at times. But it’s beautiful and so well written that it’s worth all the tears. It’s a love story many of us don’t have to imagine because many of us have the luxury of being with who we want to be with. This story is the triumph of finding love in a world determined to make you believe you don’t deserve it.

He Said–Thanks for that mushy opening Christina.  Not to turn this post into a Dr. Pepper 10 commercial but I’m a man.  I don’t like Valentine’s Day. The flowers die and the chocolates are overpriced. It’s a no win for men.  If you do something special, well, you were supposed to.  If you don’t, enjoy that dog house. What I now present is a list of books to make available for your male patrons out there. These should help get their minds off of pink hearts and messages written in clouds…

The Inquisitor By Peter Clement: Imagine being in a hospital overrun with SARS. People are dying all
around you and you can’t figure out why.  Now picture there being a killer on the loose as well.  Basically, you’re Dennis Hoffman in Outbreak except instead of a monkey you’re trying to track down a murder.  This suspenseful thriller will take your breath away for all the right reasons. Diamonds not included.

The Last Good Man by Patience Swift: There’s something magical about a story of a man against nature: Robinson Crusoe, Hatchet, Into the Wild.  These stories have always fascinated me.  They are man at his most vulnerable, alone and dependent completely on himself.  Patience Swift brings this classic ‘man vs. nature’ battle back to the forefront with a stunning tale of redemption when our lonely protagonist is forced to take care of something he never expected: a child.

Death of a Dreamer by Alison Behnke: John Lennon’s death was a punch to the gut of millions of people around the world.  You may think you know the story, but you really only know the ending.  In Death of a Dreamer Alison Behnke will walk you through the lives of John Lennon and his assassin, Mark David Chapman.  Each step is agonizing as the pieces slowly reveal themselves.  You’ll wish you could rewrite the ending of this gripping true story of life and death.

*Title availability may vary by geographic location.

Heart and Soul by Kadir Nelson: This children’s title chronicles a young woman’s life, reflecting on her history and ancestors that were forced into slavery and living to see
the election of the first African-American President of the United States. The audiobook is narrated by famed actress and choreographer Debbie Allen.

King Peggy: An American Secretary, Her Royal Destiny, and the Inspiring Story of How She Changed an African Village by Peggielene Bartels and Eleanor Herman:
Can you imagine going from working as a secretary to receiving a call, telling you that you are now king of a town in Ghana? That’s exactly what happened to Peggielene Bartels and this memoir, which will be released on February 21st, is set to tell her stranger than fiction true story.

Ossuaries by Dionne Brand: Described as a “hypnotic long poem”, novelist and poet Brand’s Ossuaries has been honored with The Griffin Poetry Prize, one of Canada’s prestigious poetry awards.

Zone One by Colson Whitehead: Zombies? Check. Post-apocalyptic vision of America? Check. A mixture of horror and thought-provoking narrative? Check. Acclaimed author Colson Whitehead puts a fresh spin on the ‘zombie’ genre with his most recent novel that I have not been able to stop reading. While not as action driven as some may expect, it’s reflective and engaging as a form of social commentary.

Looking for a fun “guilty pleasure”? What about a steamy love story, just in time for Valentine’s Day, by AlTonya Washington or Brenda Jackson? Or soak up Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless by Kiki Swinson Noire. Those interested in the urban fiction genre may want to revisit my blog post from November and the Urban/Street Lit suggested title list in Content Reserve.

You can find several suggested title lists in Content Reserve to help build your collection for Black History Month and beyond. Look for Featured lists: African American Authors and Topics, African American for Kids and Young Adult, African American Literature and African American Nonfiction. Contact our content sales team for more information on these titles and more at collectionteam@overdrive.com.

*Title availability may vary by geographic location.

Melissa Work is a marketing & outreach specialist at OverDrive.

With the release of OverDrive® Media Console™ v2.4 for Android™, BlackBerry® and Windows Phone, users can:

• Return audiobooks as well as eBooks.
• Find definitions while reading using the dictionary lookup feature. Users can also use Wikipedia search, too!

The system requirements are still the same. The free apps can be installed on phones and devices running…

• Android v1.5 (or newer)
• Touch screen BlackBerry OS v4.7 (or newer)
• Non-touch screen BlackBerry OS v4.5 (or newer)
• Windows Phone 7 (or newer)

OMC v2.4 for iOS —iPhone®, iPad®, iPod touch®—will have early audiobook returns and dictionary lookup for iOS v4.0 (or newer) available soon.

Users with OverDrive Media Console already installed will get a notification that an update is available. To get the update now, click here.

Brianne Carlon is a public relations specialist for OverDrive.

Adlai E. Stevenson High School (Illinois) http://d125.lib.overdrive.com

Allentown Public Library (Carbon Lehigh Downloadable Library) (Pennsylvania) http://cldl.lib.overdrive.com

Appalachian Regional Library (North Carolina) http://arl.lib.overdrive.com

Ascension Parish Public Library (Louisiana) http://overdrive.myapl.org

Atwater Library and Computer Centre (Canada) http://atwaterlibrary.lib.overdrive.com

Barnstable High School (Massachusetts) http://barnstablehighschool.lib.overdrive.com

Boston College (Massachusetts) http://bc.lib.overdrive.com

Brighton Grammar School (Australia) http://brightongrammar.lib.overdrive.com

Buckinghamshire County Council (United Kingdom) http://buckinghamshire.lib.overdrive.com

Downers Grove North High School (Illinois) http://dgnhs.lib.overdrive.com

Eastern Shore Public Library (Virginia) http://espl.lib.overdrive.com

Edmonton Public Schools (Canada) http://epsb.lib.overdrive.com

Excelsior Springs School District (Missouri) http://essd40.lib.overdrive.com

Francis Parker School (California) http://francisparker.lib.overdrive.com

Grace A. Dow Memorial (Michigan) http://www.midland-mi.org/overdrive

Heritage Christian Online School (Canada) http://heritageebooks.lib.overdrive.com

High Tech High (California) http://hightechhigh.lib.overdrive.com

Hilton College (South Africa) http://hilton.lib.overdrive.com

Jasper Dubois County Contractual Public Library (Indiana) http://jdcpl.lib.overdrive.com

Lake Highland Preparatory School (Florida) http://lhps.lib.overdrive.com

Lake Wales Charter Schools (Florida) http://lwcs.lib.overdrive.com

Lancaster County Library System (South Carolina) http://lancastersc.lib.overdrive.com

Lawrence Central High School (Indiana) http://lawrence.lib.overdrive.com

Metcalfe County School District (Kentucky) http://metcalfe.lib.overdrive.com

Mohawk Valley Library System (New York) http://mvls.lib.overdrive.com

New Haven Community Schools (Michigan) http://newhaven.lib.overdrive.com

New Lisbon Schools (Wisconsin) http://nlsd.lib.overdrive.com

Northwestern Regional Library (North Carolina) http://nwrl.lib.overdrive.com

Novo Nordisk (New Jersey) http://novonordisk.lib.overdrive.com

O’Gorman High School (South Dakota) http://oghs.lib.overdrive.com

Oologah-Talala Public Schools (Oklahoma) http://otpslibrary.lib.overdrive.com

Ozyegin University (Turkey) http://ozyegin.lib.overdrive.com

Piedmont Regional Library System (Georgia) http://prlib.lib.overdrive.com

Pine Bluff Jefferson County Library System (Arkansas) http://pbjclibrary.lib.overdrive.com

Pueblo City-County Library District (Colorado) http://downloadables.pueblolibrary.org

Richmond-Tweed Regional Library (Australia) http://eresources.rtrl.nsw.gov.au

South Ripley Community School Corporation (Indiana) http://southripley.lib.overdrive.com

St Hilda’s School Gold Coast (Australia) http://sthildas.lib.overdrive.com

St. Lawrence University (New York) http://stlawu.lib.overdrive.com

St. Lucie County Library System (Florida) http://stlucieco.lib.overdrive.com

Tipton County Public Library (Indiana) http://tiptonpl.lib.overdrive.com

Washington District Libraries (Pennsylvania) http://waggin.lib.overdrive.com

Wausau East and West High School (Wisconsin) http://wausau.lib.overdrive.com

Westlake High School (Texas) http://whs.lib.overdrive.com

White County Regional Library System (Arkansas) http://wcrls.lib.overdrive.com

Williamsville Central School District (New York) http://overdrive.williamsvillek12.org

If you would like a suggested title list created for your library or consortium, please contact OverDrive’s content sales team at collectionteam@overdrive.com.

Melissa Work is a marketing & outreach specialist at OverDrive.

The founders have created the website Digital Learning Day full of great ideas, tool kits and showcases of school districts that are using digital media and advanced technologies to further their students’ educations.  There will even be a town hall meeting you can register for to learn more about the digital learning movement put on by the Alliance for Excellent Education.

If you aren’t able to institute any of their innovative lesson plans, I have some simple ideas for you to use with your students:

• During silent reading, instead of having students pull out text books, have them check out a title from your digital collection.
• Pull up a title on an Interactive White Board for open discussion about sentence structure and parts of speech.  Allow students to highlight favorite or important quotations.
• Assign a book report using Maximum Access titles.
• If you’re just getting started with your OverDrive service, spend 15 minutes at the end of class walking your students through the process.

Digital learning day may be February 1^st, but incorporating technology into your lesson plans can be a day-to-day exercise.  Whether it’s keeping your students engaged with your OverDrive service or by using Digital Learning Day’s great website tool kits, there are endless ways to keeping your classroom ahead of the curve.

Adam Sockel is a marketing and outreach specialist for OverDrive.

Having survived my teenage years and still being close enough in age to accurately reflect—I can honestly say, reading is the last thing you think about as a teenager. Everything seems so infinite in high school. You think you’ll stay best friends forever. You’ll be in love forever. You think every moment gets trapped in time. You lose focus a little. But don’t worry, we don’t lose ourselves completely. It’s the little things that end up keeping you grounded when you’re growing up. Here are a few little things to bring the teens in your life back down to earth:

The Sky is Every Where By Jandy Nelson: When you’re young you don’t think about death invading the realm of your youth, because why would it? You have your whole life in front of you. Lennie Walker is 17 and living in the shadow of her evanescent sister, Bailey. But when Bailey dies, Lennie is cast into the bright wide light of the world with no instruction on how to exist without the sister who so brilliantly shined in it. Nelson explores grief, love and moving on in a beautifully written ode to growing up.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer: This isn’t your beloved fairytale. Meet Cinder, gifted mechanic and cyborg trying to get by in New Beijing—a futuristic world where machine and man intermix on the city’s crowded streets. Yes, our future Cinderella still has a nasty stepmother and a handsome prince, but Cinder is more than a fairytale princess. The fate of the world hinges on her small almost human shoulders.

Ashfall by Mike Mullin: Imagine a weekend home by yourself without the distraction of your parents or pesky siblings. The TV is yours to commandeer and the fridge yours to pillage. Now imagine that on that weekend a Yellowstone supervolcano erupts and rains fire and ash down on your hometown. Welcome to the apocalypse, population: you.

*Title availability may vary by geographic location.

Christina Bernecker is a training associate for OverDrive.

First stop is Mrs. Rowe’s Restaurant in Staunton, VA. This small-town staple has been family-owned and serving up home cooked Southern favorites since 1947.  Save room for dessert! There’s Apple-Dapple Pie, Smoothest Ever Peanut Butter Pie, and Virginia’s Almost Impossible Coconut Pie. At home you can learn to master Mrs. Rowe’s perfect pie crust with step-by-step instructions in Mrs. Rowe’s Little Book of Southern Pies.

Now let’s head down to Nashville, TN. We might just get lucky and bump into a celebrity at The Loveless Café! I can’t decide between the roasted butternut squash soup with cornbread croutons, the chicken and dumplings or the black-eyed pea and country ham chowder. Good thing I can make them all at home from Southern Country Cooking from the Loveless Café: Fried Chicken, Hams, and Jams from Nashville’s Favorite Café.

Our next stop is the South’s weirdest city, Ashville, NC. No trip to Ashville would be complete without a stop at the Tupelo Honey Café. Heavenly appetizers include baked goat cheese and smoked tomato dip with garlic crostini, crispy fried artichokes with oven-roasted tomatoes and lemon vinaigrette, and nut-crusted brie with cabernet balsamic-glazed figs. Make them for your next party with Tupelo Honey Café: Spirited Recipes from Asheville’s New South Kitchen.

We’re moving on to a place that I once called home for three years, the South Carolina Lowcountry. We’ll take a short drive from Charleston out to the Old Post Office Restaurant on Edisto Island. I don’t know about you, but I can never get enough fresh caught, southern cooked seafood! I’m dying to make something from Cooking in the Lowcountry from the Old Post Office Restaurant: Spanish Moss, Warm Carolina Nights, and Fabulous Southern Food. That subtitle says it all. For more authentic Lowcountry recipes, you may also want to try Seafood Favorites: Recipes from the Lowcountry and for a twist a South Carolina favorite, try Nathalie Dupree’s Shrimp and Grits.

On to Georgia! We’ve got a lot cover here. Our first stop will be The Lady & Sons Restaurant in Savannah and I can’t think of a better place to get started in Georgia than a restaurant owned and operated by Paula Deen! You can cook up your own versions of Paula’s buttery goodness at home with The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook. On our way to Atlanta, we’ll stop by a local favorite restaurant, The Blue Willow Inn. Baked pineapple casserole, orange pecan glazed chicken and wild rice, and grits lasagna are few specialties you’ll find in The Blue Willow Inn Cookbook: Discover Why the Best Small-Town Restaurant in the South is in Social Circle, Georgia. Moving on to Atlanta, we’ll drop by The Flying Biscuit Café. How about watermelon and mint salad, Jack Daniel’s espresso black bean chili, or chocolate biscuit bread pudding with honey crème anglaise? Recipes can be found in The Flying Biscuit Café Cookbook.

Continuing on to our final destination, it’s time for southern BBQ! We’ll be stopping in Decatur, AL, for some BBQ of the world championship variety. Want to give it a go yourself? Be sure to use advice from Big Bob Gibson’s BBQ Book: Recipes and Secrets from a Legendary Barbecue Joint.  Mouthwatering recipes include grilled chops with apple-cranberry maple glaze, barbecue bacon-wrapped shrimp with basil stuffing, pecan-crusted pork tenderloin pinwheels with Carolina mustard sauce, and that’s just the pork section.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this Southern culinary eBook tour as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it! To continue the tour, log in to Content Reserve for a suggested title list of Southern Cookbooks and more great Southern restaurants!

*Title availability may vary by geographic location.

Karen Donovan is a collection development associate at OverDrive.

Cindy Orr talks big books to look forward to this year in her monthly column:

What better way to start a new year than to take a look at some of the books we can anticipate with pleasure in the next few months? While the Fall Announcements are not out quite yet, we have a pretty good list of upcoming titles that should be available in digital form:

Fiction

JANUARY

• Margot Livesey – The Flight of Gemma Hardy (HarperCollins) Jan 24
• Robert Harris – Fear Index (Knopf) Jan 31

FEBRUARY

• Dan Chaon – Stay Awake (short stories) (Ballantine) Feb 7
• Deborah Crombie – No Mark Upon Her (Morrow) Feb 7
• Frank Delaney – The Last Storyteller (Random) Feb 7
• Robin Hobb – City of Dragons (HarperVoyager) Feb 7
• Lisa Unger – Twice (Broadway) Feb 7
• Elizabeth Moon – Echoes of Betrayal (Del Rey) Feb 21

MARCH

• Kathryn Harrison – Enchantments (Random) Mar 6
• Hari Kunzru – Gods Without Men (Knopf) Mar 6
• Naomi Novik - Crucible of Gold (Del Rey) Mar 6
• Thomas Perry – Poison Flower (Jane Whitefield) Mar 6
• Lauren Groff – Arcadia (Voice/HarperCollins) Mar 13
• Suzanne Brockmann – Born to Darkness (Ballantine) Mar 20
• Lionel Shriver – The New Republic (HarperCollins) Mar 27
• Danielle Steel – Betrayal (Delacorte) Mar 27

APRIL

• Alexander McCall Smith - The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection: No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (Pantheon) Apr 3
• Phillip Margolin – Capitol Murder – (HarperCollins) Apr 3
• Christopher Moore – Sacre Bleu: a Comedy of Art (Morrow) Apr 3
• Sidney Sheldon & Tillie Bagshawe – Angel of the Dark (Morrow) Apr 3
• Anne Tyler – The Beginner’s Goodbye (Knopf) Apr 3
• Ron Rash – The Cove (Ecco) Apr 10
• Roberto Bolano – The Secret of Evil (New Directions) Apr 17
• William Boyd – Waiting for Sunrise (HarperCollins) Apr 17
• Anne Perry – Dorchester Terrace (Charlotte and Thomas Pitt) (Ballantine) Apr 17

MAY

• Alison Bechdel – Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama (Houghton) May 1
• Nell Freudenberger – The Newlyweds (Knopf) May 1
• Toni Morrison – Home (Knopf) May 8
• Peter Carey – The Chemistry of Fear (Knopf) May 15
• China Mieville – Railsea (Del Rey) May 15
• Richard Ford – Canada (Ecco) May 22
• Paul Theroux – The Lower River (Houghton) May 22

JUNE

• Lincoln Child – The Third Gate  (Doubleday) Jun 12
• Mark Haddon – The Red House (Doubleday) Jun 12
• Jess Walter – Beautiful Ruins (HarperCollins) Jun 12
• Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan – The Night Eternal (HarperCollins) Jun 26

AUGUST

• Martin Amis – Lionel Asbo: the State of England (Knopf) Aug 21
• Justin Cronin – The Twelve (sequel to The Passage) (Ballantine) Aug 28

Nonfiction

JANUARY

• Michel Houellebecq – The Map and the Territory (Knopf) Jan 3
• William Gass – Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts (Knopf) Jan 17

FEBRUARY

• Katherine Boo – Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random) Feb 7

MARCH

• Alain de Botton – Religion for Atheists: a Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion (Pantheon) Mar 6

MAY

• Robert Caro – The Passage of Power: the Years of Lyndon Johnson (Knopf) May 1
• Anna Quindlen – Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake (Random) May 1

Fall:

• John Banville – Ancient Light (Knopf)
• Michael Chabon – Telegraph Avenue (Harper Perennial)
• Barbara Kingsolver – Flight Behavior (HarperCollins)
• Philipp Meyer – The Son (Random)

Thanks to the hard work of many over the past 12 months the number of K-12 students now accessing OverDrive’s services now surpasses 1 million users.  These students come from hundreds of schools throughout the world.  In fact, OverDrive now works with schools in more than 15 countries around the globe spanning every continent save for Antarctica, of course (penguins, it seems, are not big into reading).

While we here at OverDrive take pride in those statistics; this survey wasn’t created simply for numbers.  I wanted to learn how schools and their students are using the School Download Library.  When asked how the service is being implemented over 60% of the responses mentioned that they use OverDrive as a part of their daily curriculum.  Specific responses included using audiobooks for ESL and Special Education classes to help with pronunciation and providing additional reading materials to enhance lessons from textbooks.  It was also learned that nearly 83% of schools provide their students with Wi-Fi internet to allow for the downloading of titles using their own devices and phones.

Being a Marketing & Outreach Specialist, I took personal pride in seeing that 70% of schools are using OverDrive-created marketing materials to reach out to their students.  However, schools are also using the communication templates found on the Online Marketing Kit, sending newsletters out to parents, making morning announcement and connecting with students via social networking.

When asked whether or not they would recommend OverDrive to other schools 97% of responders said yes.  That said, we realize that this is an ever-growing product and there will always be room for improvement.  We received dozens of suggestions for improvements as well as requests for additions to our content, which you can look forward to seeing throughout 2012.

I want to say thank you to everyone who participated and you can expect to see this growth continue through 2012 and beyond.  If you ever have any questions, comments or suggestions pertaining to the School Download Library product please don’t hesitate to contact your Account Specialist or myself directly at asockel@overdrive.com.  We’re here to help!

Adam Sockel is a marketing and outreach specialist for OverDrive.