Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Over the past year, I have become a constant patron of my library's digital media collection, but one big issue frequently frustrated me. Many books in their collection are not offered in Kindle format, only OverDrive READ or Adobe ePub. I could find no information on Amazon about this issue, and I turned to my IT-expert husband to help me figure this out. After the two of us did some Internet research on the subject, I was relieved when we discovered the existence of this OverDrive Media Console (ODMC) app for Kindle devices. This is how to download this app on a Kindle Fire: 1. Go to the Home page and click on the button for the Apps menu at the top right of the screen. This will summon your Apps Library. 2. Click on the button for the Store menu at the top right of the screen. This will bring up the Kindle Store 3. Search for this app by typing in its name (it will come up the instant you type "over"). 4. Click on the FREE button beside it to the right. It will immediately download onto the Fire, installing an icon both in your App Library and on the carousel on your Kindle home page. 5. Click on the ODMC icon to enter the app. I am giving this app 5 stars simply because I am just so very grateful it exists! Though it is free, it is not a shoddy piece of software fulfilling the prophecy, "You get what you pay for." It has a lot of good features but, being free, it is not surprising that it doesn't have all the "bells and whistles" that Kindle Fire has. In particular, it lacks two of the premiere features I incessantly rely on in my Kindle Fire: highlighting and notes. ODMC only offers the ability to bookmark a particular page on which I would prefer to highlight text or write a memory-jogging note to myself. The interface is also quite a bit different. When you are inside an ebook you have downloaded from your public library, there is a ^ button at the middle-bottom of the Kindle Fire screen which, when pressed, brings up six different menus. I have provided descriptions of their functions below: 1. Details: This takes you to the page on your library's website with graphics and a blurb describing what a given ebook is about, as well as providing Share links for that ebook for you to post about it via eMail, Facebook, Goodreads and/or Twitter. 2. Navigation: This offers access to that ebook's hyperlinked Table of Contents. 3. Return/Delete: This allows you to return the library book right from your Kindle, in advance of the auto-return that occurs on the ebooks's due date. This is a helpful feature that does not exist on the website of the library itself and is something that my Kindle Fire does not offer either--I have to go to my Kindle Library on the Amazon website to early return a book in Kindle format. 4. Bookshelf: This displays all OverDrive READ ebooks that you currently have checked out from your public library. It also displays a toolbar menu at the bottom of the screen that allows you to search for ebooks on your library's website, choose how you will sort your downloaded ebooks, click on the ebook you were most recently viewing, adjust settings for ODMC, track current downloads, access your bookmarks, look at a record of all OverDrive READ ebooks that you have previously deleted off your Kindle, sent Feedback to OverDrive, and access Help files and product information about ODMC. 5. Bookmarks: This allows you to insert a bookmark, view your bookmarks for the ebook you are currently reading, or access all of your bookmarks for all of the OverDrive READ ebooks that are currently checked out to you from your library. 6. Reader Settings: This allows you to adjust brightness, color scheme, font size, font style, landscape columns (one, two or three columns for text), line spacing (small, medium or large), margins (none, small, medium or large), orientation (auto-rotate, portrait or landscape), screen timeout (default of 5 minutes, 2, 10 or 20 minutes), default layout (ODMC attempts to display an ebook as the publisher intended but some of the publisher's formatting choices may not display well on your Kindle; if you turn this setting off, ODMC allows you to override publisher preferences to choose your own), page animation (this enables or disables page-slide animation).