#22 Audiobooks and almost to the finish line!

The library staff species is well-known for its love of books. And this love doesn’t stop at the written word, no. It encompasses books on tape, books on cd, and now…downloadable audiobooks!

With your new MP3 player right around the corner, you might want to start thinking of how you can get those beloved books to play on it.  If your library uses NetLibrary or OverDrive, then that is a great place to start. But realizing that not everyone will have this, I would like you to check out Librivox, a website where volunteers record themselves reading books from the public domain and then upload them for your downloading convenience. You can download the books through iTunes, subscribe to the book in an RSS feed, sign up for a chapter-a-day in your email inbox, download each chapter, or download the whole book in a zip file (which is a compressed file that will need to be “unzipped” or uncompressed once on your computer — winzip is an example of a zip program). I have listened to many a Sherlock Holmes mystery, turn-of-the-century mysteries, all the Jane Austens you can shake a stick at, some E.M. Forster, G.K. Chesterton, and I think I might tackle Tom Jones next.

You might also want to take a look at http://www.podiobooks.com/ – not a huge site and much of it is science fiction, but all the books published there are free to download.  I liked Singularity and How to Disappear Completely — both books are read by their authors.

Discovery Resources:

If your library has NetLibrary, you might want to check out this 12 minute tutorial: Introduction to Netlibrary*. It covers the downloading process for Netlibrary audiobooks using Windows Media Player 10. (be patient, it may take a few minutes to upload this for viewing)

Take a look at Brooklyn Public Library’s selection of OverDrive downloadable audiobooks. It gets a little confusing, because they sneak the video and ebooks into the subject search areas so that you have to doublecheck that you are actually looking at audiobooks, but it’s interesting to see different ways that libraries are providing digital materials to patrons.

If you have patrons with vision problems, they may be a good candidate for the Talking Book Program through the Texas State Library. In which case, they would have access to unabridged books through OverDrive. A wonderful resource! 

 

 

Discovery Exercise:

 

 Go to www.librivox.org

1. Search their catalog.
2. Click on the eAudiobooks link and explore some of the 1300 + titles.
3. Create a blog post about your findings. Did you locate a title that you might want to try out and download once you have your player?

OPTIONAL: Try downloading a title from Librivox or podiobooks.com or NetLibrary (if your library has a subscription) . You don’t have to have a portable player to listen to audiobooks, you can also listen to it from a computer.

* Tutorial created by Mary Kyle (PLCMC) using free screencasting software Wink.