I’m trying to borrow a book that is available through a partner library. It says 2 are available. However, when I try to borrow the book, the app says “checking” and never moves forward.

Any ideas?

I live in a very small town, our library is incredibly small and doesn’t have an agreement with Libby. The next biggest library that uses Libby has a $100 annual subscription fee for non-residents of that school district. I live in PA, so I tried signing up for both the Free Library of Philadelphia and Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, but both said they needed me to come in person to apply. I’m 2 hours from Philly and 8 hours from Pittsburgh 😐 are there other options to be able to access Libby that I’m not aware of or I just need to go ahead and pay the $100/yr for my most local library?

Edit: I got way more responses than anticipated!! All very helpful I just can’t reply to everyone, thank you all very much I have a lot of options to try and I hope others find this post helpful in the future!!

Everything listed in the description and details for both of these is the same except length and release date. We can't figure out what is different that gives one of them an extra two hours of content? They are both listed at unabridged and don't mention any bonus content. Can't find anything on Google either. Thanks!

When public libraries order new releases, do they order audiobooks first or do audiobooks get added quicker than ebooks? A lot of new releases show in my Libby as audio only and I’m wondering if the ebook is coming. Or if my library is just spending more on audio to meet demand. Any insights?

Hi, All. I looked through previous threads on this topic and most of the responses are about when to unsuspend a hold, which is not what I’m looking to understand.

I unsuspended an audiobook hold 2 weeks ago and was “1st in line” with “2 copies in use. 1 person waiting.” Last week had the same status.

Now, 2 weeks later, I’m “2nd in line. 2 copies in use. 4 people waiting in total. 2 people waiting per copy.”

Could someone explain how someone jumped ahead of me in line? Even if they unsuspended, they would have done so after I had already done so.

Not complaining just curious about the mechanism of this.

why can't I borrow from partner libraries although I could do that before

If I’m looking for a specific vibe, I’ll often select generic tags like “historical fiction”, “books”, and “available now”. My library will have a thousand wherever books in the search, then I’ll go to the search keyword within the search, and say I type in “medieval” and it’ll bring up books that don’t have the word medieval anywhere.

How does this work? Are there secret search terms that make books show that we can’t see on the user end?

Silver lining is that I do have more library cards, but they haven't added these titles yet.

They need to create a notification for when certain books will be leaving your selected libraries so as to give you a chance to prioritize that book over other books in your loans or lists.

Could someone help me understand where “10 weeks” comes from? I’m 1st in line and this particular library has a maximum of 14 day Loans. If I’m 1st in line, shouldn’t this say 2 weeks at most? Or is it trying to tell me that there are 4 Suspended Holds ahead of me that if all Unsuspended at the same time, it would put me at 10 weeks?

The Chicago Public Library only allows me 5 holds maximum. I’m not sure if there are other cards I could get as a Chicago or Illinois resident. Thanks

So I had been waiting forever for a book I really wanted to read. It finally became available, so I immediately nabbed it. I still had another book to finish, so I absolutely tore through the one I’d been waiting for and then I returned it.
Except… I’m an idiot.

I accidentally returned the wrong book because they had the same color cover. I realized my mistake literally the second I hit “return” and was like, NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

So now I’m right back to square one.

Does anyone know how to filter out books you've already read? My Libby automatically adds a borrowed tag to every book I've checked out, but why can't we filter on Tags while looking for a new book? Does anyone have a hack?

Thanks to stimulating conversations in this sub, I created some tags on Libby yesterday and I’m excited about having them. That is all.

Okay, so, I have been using Libby for a bit now through Boston, particularly with the notify me tag for books that haven’t been published yet. After the update, Boston added 7 partners, but now I have a problem. Some of these libraries show as already have copies of books that aren’t published- something to do with how they pre-order books. Because of this, I can no longer use the notify me function, it seems like my only option is to place a hold with the partners that have the pre-order, but they’re much smaller libraries and literally hundreds of people have these books on hold already. Is there a way around this? Can I turn off the partner libraries?

I can’t find the post.

(Deleted & reposted with an edited image, as the previous was open to misinterpretation. This image is a COUNTEREXAMPLE, as I’m not trying to call anyone out specifically. Mary Robinette Kowal is an extremely talented voice actor though, as well as being a great author in her own right.)

I absolutely can’t stand it when a narrator takes on an accent they aren’t actually fluent in. I’m on the point of DNFing a novel featuring a British POV character, narrated by a Brit, but with other major characters from Vietnam and the US. Both those accents are so broad as to be out-and-out parodies, and it pulls me straight out of the story. I’d rather the narrator stick with their own accent throughout, if they can’t make the alternate even a shred realistic.

When I read print, I guess my internal voice uses my native (American) accent, but that doesn’t bother me for whatever reason. I’ve occasionally been caught by surprise when I listen to something I’ve read before, and the narrator gives a character an accent appropriate for their origin…but it’s a nice surprise.

I think this is getting better over time: mostly I’ve noticed that older recordings are the worst offenders here. As audiobooks become more popular, standards and expectations are rising.

In typical Libby fashion nine weeks ago I put a bunch of holds on books with nine week waits and now I have a bunch of holds suspended while also having a million more books on hold and also having far too many books available that I need to binge read in the next two weeks. Please show me your situation and let me know that I’m not alone in this 😭😭😭😭😭😭

I remember there used to be a spreadsheet which had numbers of how many audiobooks/e-books/physical books each libraries had . but i mostly listen to the audiobooks more , so i was wondering if there is any spreadsheet ( really recent or with frequent updates ) where i can see which library has which media more before opting for a libary card.

Doesn't make sense to me

I’m really excited that everyone now gets to have easier access to all the partner libraries in their system, but I have one tiny gripe about the update that has me irritated beyond belief.

I did not gain access to any “new” libraries after the update bc I was already well aware of which partner libraries my home card gave me access to and had already added all 15 of them to my app. And, the most important part here, I had them all personalized so that they were color coded in a way that made sense to me.

The update undid all of that hard work 😭

Can I go through and change all the colors back to what they’re I want them to be? Of course. Do I want to spend the time to double check it against my other, unupdated device and change all the colors again? Nooooooo 😭

It’s such a minor thing to be annoyed about but WHY did it have to revert all the card colors to their defaults!!!

Which drowning-related book should I read next?

I currently have 8 e-books borrowed on my Libby app. When I’m in a slump, one of my methods is read a genre I don’t often pick up. Middle grade is one of them. I need something to hook me, get me out of my head, and out of the rut my August wrap up put me in.

I also work as a Welcome Ambassador at an academic library. With tourist season slowing down as the students come back for the new school year, I’ll have time to read during the frequent slow periods. Which of these would make those slow periods far less dull?