The following is a press release written by University College Cork (UCC) in partnership with RTÉ and the Irish Military Archives:

• Database and interactive map lists all of the combatant and civilian fatalities.
• Project shows that numbers killed were considerably less than in the War of Independence.
• Research indicates the Civil War was more violent, brutal and protracted in counties Kerry, Tipperary and Louth.

A ground-breaking new research and digital mapping project launched today (Monday, 29 April) by the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin TD, lists all of the combatant and civilian fatalities in the Irish Civil War. The project represents the first systematic attempt to investigate the number of people killed in the conflict.

The Irish Civil War Fatalities Project is a ground-breaking research and digital mapping project that covers one of the most complex periods in Ireland’s history. For decades, historians of the Irish Civil War have resorted to estimates when surveying the human cost of the conflict. Now a rigorously researched, academically contextualised database and interactive map lists all of the combatant and civilian fatalities in the thirty-two counties between the opening shots of the Civil War on 28 June 1922 and the ceasefire and dump arms order on 24 May 1923.

The project shows that numbers killed were considerably less than in the War of Independence. This is mainly due to the lack of deliberate killing of civilians, who were three times more likely to have been killed in the War of Independence than in the Civil War. It shows the Civil War was more violent, brutal and protracted in counties Kerry, Tipperary and Louth.

The research also suggests a new chronology of the Civil War, contradicting the idea that major combat was over after the first month of the war. The study of fatalities shows that deaths spiked not only in the opening ‘conventional’ phase of the war, but also in the peak of the guerrilla war in autumn 1922 and again in March 1923 with a concerted series of reprisal killings.

Led by University College Cork (UCC) in partnership with RTÉ and the Irish Military Archives, the project was made possible through funding from the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Historical Strand of the Decade of Centenaries Programme 2012-2023.

The Irish Civil War Fatalities Project provides new insights into the frequency, nature and concentration of violence across Ireland during the Civil War, complementing the latest research on the military, social and political aspects of the conflict. The interactive map is a major work of public scholarship and fills a significant gap in the historical record.

Launching the project, Minister Martin said: “The Irish Civil War was a great national tragedy and left a deep wound in the newly independent State. The significant loss of life and the injury to the fabric of our communities, and many families, were felt for generations, even to this day. By exploration of the impacts and factual history of the War, UCC’s research serves to deepen our appreciation of the challenges faced and sacrifices made by the individuals and families that made those communities - and the University has done so with a very thorough, engaging, innovative & accessible new resource.”

The Minister added, “From the outset of the project my Department has supported the scope and ambition of UCC, with encouragement and significant funding to underpin the task. This output of this project is exactly the kind of accessible data that the Expert Advisory Group and Government hoped would emerge as an enduring legacy of the Programme, and it adds significantly to the body of work already produced by UCC and others over the course of the Decade. I commend all those who worked on and supported the delivery of this new and invaluable public asset, which assists us all in deepening our understanding of the complex history of the birth of the nation.”

Dr Andy Bielenberg, Principal Investigator of the Irish Civil War Fatalities Project and Senior Lecturer at UCC School of History, said: “Drawing on a wide range of sources, this project offers new insights into the spatial and temporal patterns of violence during the Civil War as well as the social profiles, ages and backgrounds of the victims of that violence. In addition to building a clearer picture of the combatant fatalities of the Irish Civil War, the new research presents a fuller picture of civilian fatalities. We can now see the impact of the conflict on civilians in large swathes of Ireland which remained entirely uncharted until now.”

“The interactive map will be an invaluable tool for researching family history, local history, and filling in gaps in our knowledge about the Civil War,” Dr Andy Bielenberg said.

John Dorney, Historian and Research Assistant, said: “Some of the most interesting findings come from the data collected about fatalities as well as the raw numbers. For instance, we can show that pro-Treaty military casualties were of a significantly lower social class than the anti-Treaty side; that both Dubliners and natives of Cork were overrepresented in the pro-Treaty casualties, while people from Kerry were twice as likely to die on the anti as on the pro Treaty side; and that while pro-Treaty deaths significantly outnumbered anti-Treaty, the latter were far more likely to executed or killed after being taken prisoner.”

The project includes:

• A searchable, interactive Civil War Fatalities map providing new insights into the frequency, nature and concentration of violence across Ireland.
• Research findings by Dr Andy Bielenberg and John Dorney, Historian and Research Assistant.
• A series of articles by invited scholars contextualising the conflict in local areas, including Dr John O’Callaghan on the Civil War in County Limerick; Owen O’Shea on the Civil War in Kerry; Dr Helene O’Keefe on child victims of political violence and Professor Pauric Travers on the Civil War in County Donegal.

View the project here on UCC’s website and on RTÉ.

The Civil War Fatalities Project is the latest in a series of outreach and engagement projects coordinated by UCC's interdisciplinary 'Atlas of the Irish Revolution Team' at UCC during the Decade of Centenaries. These include the award-winning Atlas of the Irish Revolution; the three-part documentary series ‘The Irish Civil War’ narrated by Brendan Gleeson and three, map-based digital history projects created in partnership with RTE.ie.

The following announcement was written by the Augusta (Georgia) Genealogical Society:

Limited seating to view the virtual presentation will be offered at Adamson

Library. To reserve a seat, please call (706) 722-4073

Click here to register,  Augusta Genealogical Society

Is it time to stop the presses?

It seems that every week I report in this newsletter about more and more genealogy books that are being converted to electronic format. Sure, old books have been digitized for several years now. However, even new books are now appearing as electronic publications. Some are published on CD-ROM disks but nowadays more and more old genealogy books are being loaded onto Internet web servers and being offered online on the World Wide Web, sometimes free of charge and in other cases they may be offered for a modest fee.

One example is the 6th Edition of The Genealogist's Address Book, by Elizabeth Petty Bentley, published some years ago by Genealogical Publishing Company. It is available electronically or as a traditional (paper) book. The first four editions of The Genealogist's Address Book were printed only on paper, but the economics caught up with reference books. Each new edition cost more and more to print. As prices escalated, sales decreased. Many people could not afford the higher prices. The latest 6th Edition with 799 pages now costs $83.50 for the paper version, but the electronic version costs only $46.95. I assume the electronic version  has sold more copies than has the paper version.

This is only one such example; there are many more. Is this an indication of the end of book publishing as we know it? Will simple economics drive printed books out of existence?

Many bibliophiles cringed when the Internet search engine Google announced plans to digitize the book collections of five major libraries. To be sure, there isn't as much personal "touch and feel" with an electronic version as there is with a printed version. I have read many comments about this, such as, "no one will ever want to read an entire novel on their computer screen," or, "online books will succeed only when every bathroom has a high-speed Internet connection!" I recently read another statement from a librarian: "There’s just a coziness with a book. The smell. Can you smell a laptop?"

I believe that librarian's view is a bit too simplistic. Very few people would suggest that all books should be printed forever on paper. In fact, I now own several full-length novels that are stored on my computer or on my Kindle (or in BOTH places!

For the rest of this article, let's divide the topic of books into two major categories: (1.) books that are meant to be read from cover to cover (such as a novel) and (2.) reference books that typically are only read in small segments at a time (such as an encyclopedia or many genealogy books).

While I love my Kindle, the state-of-the-art of such “electronic book readers” will obviously continue to improve. The computers and electronic "book readers" ten or twenty years from now probably will be wafer-thin, flexible screens the size of a piece of paper that you can roll up and stuff into a pocket or purse. They will produce no more glare than a piece of paper, perhaps even less. They will be easier to read than paper. They will operate on batteries that last for twenty, fifty, or even more hours before needing to be recharged. Today's "book readers" are already about the size of a paperback novel and weigh less than one pound. As technology continues to improve, they will become even smaller and lighter. Until that day arrives, however, nobody will want to read “War and Peace” on a computer screen while sunbathing at the beach.

Reference books are an entirely different matter. Encyclopedias, operators' manuals, and other reference materials are generally read only a few pages at a time. Such reference material seems to be much better suited for online distribution. The bulk of a computer and the screen glare do not seem like major issues when reading only a few pages. Indeed, online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia and Encarta have seen skyrocketing success even as printed reference books (Encyclopædia Britannica) produce reduced sales figures every year. Actually, since 2016, the Encyclopædia Britannica has been published exclusively as an online encyclopaedia.

The Internet Archive has even created greater success than has Google. Located at https://archive.org/, the Internet Archive is a non-profit online library containing millions of FREE books, movies, software, music, websites, and more. If you are not yet using the Internet Archive, you need to start NOW!

Think of all the genealogy books you have consulted. Aren't most of them reference books? Didn't you only consult a page or two, or maybe five or ten pages? How many genealogy books have you read from cover to cover? I bet it is very few. The Genealogists' Address Book is an excellent example: it is a reference book, and nobody will ever be spellbound by it as they read it from cover to cover.

The conversion of genealogy books to digital formats would seem to make sense, even for "War and Peace," "Gone with the Wind" or "The Da Vinci Code." 

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/13355250. (A Plus Edition password is required to access that article.)

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077. 

The following is an announcement written by TheGenealogist:

For the first time, you can now pin down your ancestors in 1851!

TheGenealogist’s latest release makes it easy to locate an ancestor geographically in the 1851 U.K. census. With a choice of historical and modern georeferenced maps, this welcome development makes it simple to explore the place where your ancestors lived and discover their surroundings.

Census records have always been a staple resource for family historians. With the particulars of the street or road name, researchers will often turn to a modern map to see if they can locate where their forebears lived. This, however, can be fraught with difficulties if the road name changed over the years or the area was redeveloped. Thus, TheGenealogist has been working through its census collection, linking the records to the detailed map collections on its Map Explorer™. 

The 1851 Census of Edinburgh linked to Map Explorer™ locating Howard Place, the family home of novelist Robert Louis Stevenson

• The 1851 census now joins the ranks of other key censuses (1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911, and the 1939 Register) already integrated with the innovative Map Explorer™.
  

• With just a click of a button, researchers can pin their forebears’ residences down to a parish, street or building and trace the routes they would have taken to visit local shops, pubs, churches, workplaces, and parks.
  
  

• Historical maps reveal the location of major roads and the nearest railway stations, shedding light on how our ancestors would have travelled to other parts of the country to work, visit relatives or their hometowns.

With this latest release, subscribers of TheGenealogist can now explore their ancestors’ neighbourhood in 1851, making it easier to uncover hidden stories and discover connections to family that lived nearby.

For those family historians on the move, TheGenealogist allows you to trace your forebears’ footprints while walking down modern streets using their “Locate me” feature. Imagine retracing your ancestors’ steps and discovering the places that they had frequented! 

When viewing a household record from the 1851 census on TheGenealogist, you’ll now see a map indicating where your ancestor was during the night of the census. Clicking on this map seamlessly loads the location in Map Explorer™, enabling you to explore the area.

Read TheGenealogist’s feature article where the 1851 census locates the Edinburgh house where a famous author was born:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2024/a-leading-light-on-the-map-of-the-1851-census-7470/ 

Lifetime Discount Offer!

For a limited time, you can claim a Diamond Subscription to The Genealogist for just £89.95, a saving of £50! You’ll also receive a free Research Pack worth over £60.

To find out more and claim the offer, visit https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/MGBCEN524.

This offer comes with a Lifetime Discount, meaning you’ll pay the same discounted price every time your subscription renews.

This offer expires on 31st July 2024.

This offer includes a free research pack containing the following:-
- Subscription to Discover Your Ancestors Online Magazine (Worth £24.99)
- Researching and Locating Your Ancestors Book by Celia Heritage (Worth £9.95)
- Regional Research Guidebook by Andrew Chapman (Worth £9.95)
- Family Tree Chart (Folded)
- Birth Year from Census Date Calculator
- 10 Generation Relationship Calculator
- Ticket to The Family History Show - choose from York 2024, London 2024 or Online 2025

Total Savings: £113.24 - Save Over 55%

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections. 

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!

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The following announcement was written by Findmypast:

This week there are over 58,556 new additions to check out.
There's no better way to connect with the lives of your ancestors than by finding them within our school and occupation records. This week we've updated our collection of Staffordshire school admission registers and our Scottish Occupations & Professions

 to make it easier than ever to glean fascinating insights. 

We've also added over 13,000 First World War records and 272,757 newspaper pages. 

National School Admission Registers & Log-books 1870-1914

We improved this set with new images spanning over 150 years. 

Shugborough Tunnel, Staffordshire Wikimedia Commons

Browse these new additions from Staffordshire today and find images you've never seen before.

Scotland, Occupations & Professions

There are 38,123 brand-new Scottish occupational records for you to discover. These unique new additions span back as far as the 17th century. 

British Rolls Of Honour and Nominal Rolls

We also added 13,948 new First World War records from Leicestershire and Rutland. 

The River Soar West of Cossington in Leicestershire - Wikimedia Commons

These transcriptions document wartime Honour and Nominal Rolls. 

Over 270,000 new pages to discover...

This week we added 272,757 new newspaper pages that's taken our total page count up to a huge 77 million - explore new additions from Blyth to Ballymena now.

New titles:

• Peterborough Evening Telegraph 1949-1965, 1967, 1987

Updated titles:

• Ballymena Weekly Telegraph 1990
• Banffshire Herald 1918
• Blyth News 1974-1981
• Bridlington Free Press 1987-1989
• Buchan Observer and East Aberdeenshire Advertiser 1985, 1987-1989, 1993
• Buckingham Advertiser and Free Press 1986
• Eastbourne Gazette 1994
• Fleetwood Weekly News 1999
• Gainsborough Evening News 1988
• Halifax Daily Guardian 1910, 1913-1914, 1918-1921
• Halifax Evening Courier 1966-1967, 1986
• Hemel Hempstead Gazette and West Herts Advertiser 1985, 1987, 1989
• Hucknall Dispatch 1984, 1997, 1999
• Lincolnshire Standard and Boston Guardian 1986
• Littlehampton Gazette 1982-1984, 1986, 1988-1989
• Retford, Worksop, Isle of Axholme and Gainsborough News 1986-1987, 1996
• Scarborough Evening News 2001

Join us on Friday at 4pm

For a very special Fridays Live, Findmypast’s research specialist Jen Baldwin is joined by Helen Antrobus, Assistant National Curator at the National Trust, to delve into the incredible stories unearthed during Findmypast’s collaboration with National Trust.

Last week, we added 30,587 brand new records - explore the full release for yourself today.

The Centre for Business History in Stockholm manages over 85,000 linear meters of historical material on behalf of Swedish companies. The parts of the archives that are digital, either scanned or born digital, are now made accessible via a “digital reading room,” a new web service available at arkivet.naringslivshistoria.se.

“For 50 years, we have provided materials to researchers in our physical reading rooms. Today, increasingly larger parts of the deposits we manage are digital, and these can now be searched directly from one’s computer or mobile,” says Anders Sjöman, head of client projects and communication at the Centre for Business History.

Companies that keep their archives at the Centre thereby gain even easier access to their materials. The same applies to researchers, who gain easier access to the archival materials they need for their research.

You can read more in an article by Anders Sjöman, VP for Communications at the Centre for Business History, at: https://bit.ly/4ae0YQm

The following is a press release written by the (U.S.) National Archives and Records Administration:

Millions of Historical Records Held by the National Archives to be Digitized and Made Accessible Through Public-Private Collaboration

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) today announced a new multiyear agreement with Ancestry  to digitize, index, and publish tens of millions of historical United States records, previously unavailable online. 

“The National Archives is the nation’s record keeper, and we hold billions of stories in our collection. Our mission is to preserve, protect, and share those stories with all Americans,” said Dr. Colleen Shogan, Archivist of the United States. “Our collaboration with Ancestry is a great example of a public-private partnership. By working together, we will digitize millions of records from our holdings and make them available to the public.” 

Enlarge

Howard Hochhauser, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer at Ancestry, signs an official agreement with Dr. Colleen Shogan, Archivist of the United States, at a signing event at the National Archives Building on Wednesday, May 8, 2024, in Washington, DC. The signing marks the official agreement between Ancestry and the National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives photo by John Valceanu

The records to be digitized include U.S. military morning reports from World War II; Selective Service draft cards covering the post–World War II draft registration between 1948 and 1959; naturalization and immigration records held at the National Archives at San Francisco, CA; records held in San Francisco, CA, related to Asian Americans; and records held at the National Archives at Denver, CO, relating to Native Americans. The scope and depth of these records reflect the richness and diversity of America’s history.

Since 2008, the National Archives and Ancestry have collaborated to make important historical records more available to the public. The digitization of these records since the beginning of this collaboration and their availability through both the National Archives Catalog and the Ancestry platform help the public more easily find and access pieces of the nation’s, and their families’, history. 

Today, the Archivist of the United States and Howard Hochhauser, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer at Ancestry, officially signed an agreement to continue and expand the successful public-private collaboration. The new agreement documents the commitments by both the National Archives and Ancestry to digitize tens of millions of historical records. 

“We’re honored to take a leading role in preserving the story of America through this agreement with the National Archives,” said Hochhauser. “Given their role as the holder of the country’s largest and most distinguished collection of records, this collaboration reinforces Ancestry’s commitment to expand accessibility to historical records.” 

Additional collections and projects will be identified, agreed, and announced between the parties under this agreement. Records from Record Group 21, Military Petitions for Naturalization, 1918–1947, will be scanned beginning this month at the National Archives at San Francisco. 

Learn more about how the National Archives works with other organizations to digitize and make available National Archives holdings. A list of current digitization projects is online.

###

About the National Archives

The National Archives and Records Administration is the nation's record keeper. It safeguards and manages the official records of the U.S. Government, ensuring the documentation of our nation's history. Online visitors can explore millions of digitized documents, photographs, films, and more in the National Archives Catalog at catalog.archives.gov. 

About Ancestry

Ancestry, the global leader in family history, empowers journeys of personal discovery to enrich lives. With its unparalleled collection of more than 60 billion records, over 3 million subscribers, and over 25 million people in its growing DNA network, customers can discover their family story and gain a new level of understanding about their lives. Over the past 40 years, Ancestry has built trusted relationships with millions of people who have chosen it as the platform for discovering, preserving, and sharing the most important information about themselves and their families.

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The following is an excerpt from the MyHeritage Blog:

As the Queen of Pop Taylor Swift prepared to dazzle Paris and Lyon with her current Eras tour, our team did some research on Taylor’s family background and discovered that she is distantly related to King Louis XIV of France.

Their family connection dates back to aristocratic England in the 14th century, with their common ancestors being Michael de la Pole, second Earl of Suffolk, and his wife Katherine Stafford. Michael de la Pole was an English nobleman who supported Henry IV against Richard II during the late 14th century. In the 17th century, Taylor’s English ancestors left for the American colonies and settled in Massachusetts, before moving on to Pennsylvania a few generations later.

On Louis XIV’s side, the link is through an English noblewoman Margaret de la Pole, who married a count of Béarn (in Southwestern France) in the 15th century. Her great-granddaughter would become Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, and her granddaughter of the latter is none other than Marie de’ Medici, the paternal grandmother of the French King Louis XIV.

Louis XIV (1638–1715) is well known for building the magnificent Palace of Versailles.

Louis XIV’s parties at Versailles were spectacular. The king loved to dance, and as a young king he danced in front of the court dressed as the sun. In fact, he founded the French Royal Academy of Dance, predecessor of the Academy of the National Opera of Paris, which today trains the dancers of the Paris Opera. 

Music was constantly played at Versailles, and not just for dancing. Louis XIV loved not only listening to music, but also playing it. Did you know that he studied guitar with the best musicians of his time and that he loved singing while playing the guitar? Apparently it runs in the family!

Explore your own family connections on MyHeritage.com

DNA can be created in a laboratory environment. In fact, there is a business in creating and selling artificially-created DNA. Of course, there are also security concerns. If this technology falls into the wrong hands, all sorts of bad things could happen.

One company is now offering a service to double-check synthesized DNA. SecureDNA is a new company based in Switzerland that offers a "free, cryptographically secure, and verifiably up-to-date system to screen all DNA synthesis for potential hazards."

Here is some information about the services that SecureDNA offers as copied from the company's web site:

"We offer fast, free synthesis screening you can trust.

"SecureDNA was designed to screen all oligo and gene synthesis orders against an up-to-date list of known and emerging hazards, including pre-generated functional variants.

"Universal - fast, free, and available to all. Non-profit and free to use, thanks to several generous donations and our efficient exact-match algorithm.

"The SecureDNA team is composed of academic life scientists and cryptographers, policy analysts, information security specialists, and software engineers from many nations. They came together in 2019 to build a system capable of secure and universal DNA synthesis screening that would be suitable for stepwise or complete implementation by industry stakeholders.

"We are grateful for support from the Open Philanthropy Project to team members at MIT, Aarhus University, and Northeastern University, and to an anonymous Chinese philanthropist for a donation to team members at Tsinghua University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

"We expect new U.S. regulation to mandate rigorous DNA synthesis screening, alongside potential regulation elsewhere.

"An engineered pandemic could be far worse than COVID-19. Rigorous screening protects humanity against this risk.

"The SecureDNA system uses a novel exact-match search algorithm that finds matches to hazards and functional equivalents. It does this by generating the set of all hazard subsequences of a predefined length, choosing some to defend quasi-randomly, then using algorithms to generate millions of functionally equivalent subsequences of each. These are subjected to reverse screening by comparing them to existing sequence databases in order to remove any that match known non-hazardous entries.

"The reverse screening step virtually eliminates false positives, the inclusion of quasi-random functional variants prevents adversaries from redesigning or mutating the hazard to evade screening, and searching for 30 base pair subsequences makes it very difficult to assemble hazards from oligonucleotides that are too small to be screened using other methods.

"Because exact-match screening is computationally efficient, we can apply oblivious multi-party cryptography to protect the confidentiality of both orders and the hazard database. Using this scheme, each possible subsequence of an order to be screened is turned into a unique cryptographic hash, and each such hash is then looked up in the database of hazards.

"This hash requires multiple separate machines to compute, meaning that even an attacker who could eavesdrop on network traffic or compromise a subset of computers in the screening system could not learn the plaintext of a customer order, and not even SecureDNA itself ever receives the customer’s DNA sequences—they remain safely on-premises at a provider or within the hardware of a benchtop synthesizer.

"Screening for hazardous DNA sequences is provided as a free service by the SecureDNA Foundation, an independent nonprofit foundation in the sense of Article 80 et seqq. Swiss Civil Code with legal seat in Zug, Switzerland. The purpose of the Foundation is to develop, maintain, administrate, distribute, and encourage the universal adoption of software for screening nucleic acid sequences. The Foundation may support any action intended to prevent nucleic acids from being used to cause harm."

"COVID-19 took over 20 million lives. That's over 10x more than if a nuclear warhead detonated in a major city. And future pandemics could be far worse.

"Custom DNA is essential to biotechnology - and a healthy, sustainable future. But in the wrong hands, it could do great harm. Only authorized researchers should be able to obtain DNA permitting them to assemble pandemic-capable agents.

"SecureDNA is a free, non-profit screening platform designed to safeguard DNA synthesis everywhere."

You can learn a lot more on the SecureDNA web site at: https://securedna.org.

Librarians' nationwide struggle against excessive e-book prices has had little success. Even after short legislative successes, publishers' tight renewal and loan rules keep e-book prices high, limiting libraries' selection of popular titles and frustrating customers. According to Axios, publishers often mandate libraries renew e-book licenses every two years or after 26 lending, which they find unreasonably costly. This limits the quantity of e-books they can lend out, especially bestsellers, which angers and confuses customers. The leading OverDrive-run Libby and hoopla applications, which let readers borrow innumerable e-books and audiobooks for free, are popular. Some libraries believe OverDrive and hoopla contracts are too expensive, so they're deleting the apps, especially hoopla.

You can read more in an article published in the Axios web site at: https://www.axios.com/2024/05/06/library-librarians-e-books-license-policies.