TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home
News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics
Free Overdrive audiobooks: Tips for libraries—and their users
Thursday, March 27th, 2008By Jeff Scott, Director of the City of Casa Grande Public Library in Arizona
Moderator: Welcome to our latest contributor, Jeff Scott, library director in Casa Grande, Arizona! His bio is at the end. An aside: We’re also eager to run balanced write-ups of library e-offerings from companies besides Overdrive. - D.R.
Find free audiobooks on the Web. Libraries can use hooks like this to help advertise their downloads of audiobooks, e-books, movies, and music.
Some libraries team up in consortia to have better selection. The Greater Phoenix Digital Library in Phoenix, Arizona, is among the bigger ones and is an example of what Overdrive-style services can provide.
The allure of audio
Audio books are the most popular items for download. Many libraries with less buying power will purchase the Overdrive service with audiobooks only. Audiobooks are popular because they are the easiest and most ubiquitous of formats—easier to use in most cases than e-books, which have far more problems with clashing formats.
Most people have an MP3 player or something similar to use. The availability of titles is quite amazing. Go over to the Phoenix site and click on Audiobooks, click on Browse all, and you will find more than 10,500 titles available to you. Certain audiobooks are by the most popular authors or may even be pre-releases—as fresh as, yes, September 2008! So just imagine, having the ability to download the latest audio-book from the comfort of your own home whenever you wanted it! This is a great service.
The negatives: Long hold lists for hit titles and less-than-perfect searching
While the OverDrive audio books are a hit, with all those thousands of titles available, people may have to wait too long for the ones they want. Overdrive needs to provide more “Maximum Access” titles—those without a wait list. Let’s hope for a more liberal rights agreement between Overdrive and the publishing industry.
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