Why aren't all of the titles I see in Overdrive in my collection on SimplyE?
Some titles from Overdrive are only distributed in Overdrive Read, Adobe PDF, or Kindle format. The title must be in EPUB format or an unencrypted PDF format to work in SimplyE. There are a very low number of titles that aren't available in EPUB. The titles that aren't in EPUB format still come through Overdrive's API and are delivered to SimplyE. To clear these out there is a scheduled task that runs to make sure that the collection that you see in SimplyE only includes formats that are supported by the app.
What do the "Main Collection," "Popular Books," and "Everything" facets mean?
The "Main Collection" facet was created for a specific purpose, e.g., to filter out thousands of non-classic works imported through Project Gutenberg. These works were swamping search results with books that held little interest for contemporary readers, so NYPL created a facet to exclude them. As far as we know, NYPL is the only library that imported these works into its collection before the project replaced Project Gutenberg's public domain ebooks with CC-licensed editions from Feedbooks. Most of these titles were removed from NYPL's collection, therefore the need for "Main Collection" no longer exists. This facet will be removed when JIRA ticket SIMPLY-2286 is completed.
The "Popular Books" facet includes titles with a specific quality score, which combines the common-sense notions of "literary quality" and "popularity" into a single number. The default this quality score is set to is ".65," but it can be modified by the library in the Circulation Manager. We recommend not going too low with this setting, as this affects search results as well.
"Everything" includes all titles within the collection.
What is the default sort?
The default sort for books is alphabetical by title. The default filters are "Everything" and "Available Now." This can be modified by the library in the Circulation Manager.; options include author, title, recently added, and random.
If a library updates metadata for a specific title, will it affect all libraries on the Circulation Manager or all libraries using SimplyE?
No. Any metadata changes are saved to that library's configuration only.
When configuring a list to automatically add new books from one of the configured content sources, how long are titles considered "newly added" to those sources and be added to the list?
Once the list is configured to automatically add new books, all new books from that date forward will be added to the list. Manual curation is needed to remove titles from the list that are no longer considered to be new. This behavior is correct as of version 3.0.2 of the Circulation Manager.
What do I do when I get the error concerning "too many device activations" or "device activations reached?"
Adobe's DRM limits the number of devices that can be used with an account at one time. Once that limit is reached, a patron cannot add another and will receive messages like these. There are two ways to solve this:
- Log into the Circulation Manager as Librarian, Library Manager, or System Admin. Find the library in the drop-down list at upper left. Choose "Patrons." On the "Reset Adobe ID" screen, insert patron barcode in the Identifier field and click "Submit." This should reset the activations.
- The patron can reset the activations themselves if they are on an iOS device. To do so, they must return all titles on the device. Log out of the app. Delete the app from the device. Re-install.
For more detail, read Resolve Adobe device activations reached Error.
How quickly will new titles appear in SimplyE?
Simplistically, OverDrive update scripts run every 15 minutes. After that, another script runs to recreate the catalog in the app. So, for OverDrive, one should assume it takes at least an hour for updates to show up. Other vendor scripts may run only once per day. Depending on a number of factors, we expect the titles for other vendors ordered today will show up in the library’s SimplyE catalog the next day.
