Publicity

It seems that the closer I get to the end of this class, the more excited I am about my action learning project and the more ideas I get for it! This week I came up with some more ideas for publicity about downloadable audiobooks. I emailed NetLibrary to request free publicity materials for the library. I also asked my director about putting an article in the local paper about downloadable audiobooks. She thought that would be a good idea, but we decided to wait until we sign up with OverDrive in July and include both NetLibrary and Overdrive in the article. The NetLibrary website has a customizable press release that we could probably use.

Ongoing...

Wow! I can't believe this class is basically over. The time has really gone by quickly. I feel like there is so much more that I want to do with my project. The library already has NetLibrary, and I have finished the spreadsheet of those titles. (Of course, that will need to be updated on a regular basis.) We're getting OverDrive in the new budget year (July), so I'm not able to do that much with it yet. I'm looking forward to attending the conference in the fall. Hopefully, by that time, the library will have purchased at least one mP3 player that can be checked out to patrons. The details will then need to be worked out about how the patrons will select which books to download, and then who/when/where the actual downloads will take place. I am glad we were assigned this action project because it has caused me to be much more aware of and interested in this big new world of downloadable audio books.

Workshop

Today I mentioned to my director that I am interested in attending the downloadable audiobook workshop in Wilmington in May. She said that the same workshop is going to be held in Hickory in the fall, so she encouraged me to go to that one instead.

OverDrive List

Today I did some more research into OverDrive, which is the downloadable audio book that my library will be subscribing to beginning in the new budget year (July). I originally thought that you had to be a subscriber to browse through the titles, but I found out today that anyone can browse. Therefore, I'm going to try to create another spreadsheet of available titles similar to the one that I made for Netlibrary. This way the patrons will be able to flip through the list at the library to see what is available to be downloaded without having to browse through the sites themselves. Hopefully, this will increase their interest once they see the many different types of books available. Also, this would be helpful if we do get mP3 players at the library that can be checked out. The patrons could look through the lists and make their selections, and then the library workers could download those books onto the player for them, and they could then check out the player. That situation might not be a reality for quite some time. I need to do more research into the types of mP3 players that are compatible with Netlibrary and Overdrive. That is what is neat about this class (and this project). You don't have to worry about getting everything done by a certain deadline. Many of the projects are ongoing. Also, they are much more useful in a real world setting than are many other school assignments.