Workshop

This week I found out about a workshop that is being offered to members of the North Carolina Library Association (NCLA) about eAudiobooks. This workshop provides sessions on downloading audiobooks from Netlibrary, comparing mP3 players, and signing up & downloading from Overdrive. This would be an excellent workshop for me to attend to help me become more comfortable with audiobooks and better able to teach other staff members and patrons how to use Netlibrary & Overdrive. Unfortunately, the workshop is in Wilmington, NC, so I don't know if the library director will let me go.

Lists

I am still working on creating a list of available audiobooks on Netlibrary. I hope that having a printed list that the patrons can flip through will increase their interest in downloading the audiobooks. I also plan to ask our IT person if he can create a link to the list on the library catalog website (www.cmclibraries.org). The list is on Excel, so I will be able to sort it by title, author, publication year, and/or genre. I'll most likely print out 2 copies, one by author and one by genre. This will be an ongoing project because new audiobooks are added every month. I'm also considering creating a list of the books on cassette tape and CD that we have in the library, because there have been a number of patron requests for that.

Web Conference

Last week I attended a web conference with Tom Scott from OverDrive. This was the first web conference I have ever attended. The conference was given to help our library consortium decide whether to subscribe to OverDrive. OverDrive is an online database of over 50,000 e-books, 10,000 audio books, 2,000 videos, and 5,000 music albums, supplied by 560 different publishers. The web conference focused mainly on audio books, since that is what the library is most interested in at this time. OverDrive adds 650-1200 new titles per month, compared with 30-40 added by Netlibrary, which is currently available through our library. OverDrive also provides access to more current and popular books than Netlibrary, which has a larger selection of foreign language studies and classic titles. OverDrive also allows to be notified via email when a book that is checked out has been returned.

Audio books can be searched by Title, ISBN, or Keyword. The lending period is typically 7 days and a user can typically check out 4 titles at a time. Audio books cannot be checked in early. User must choose their library and enter their library card number. They can then download the book onto their computer. After 7 days, the book can no longer be accessed on the computer. However, if if has been transferred to mP3 or CD, it can still be accessed on those devices. All audio books can be transferred to mP3 players. The OverDrive website has a list of mP3 players that are compatible with OverDrive. Unfortunately, iPods are not compatible. Most audio books can also be burned to CD, except for a few publishers that don't allow CD burning, including Random House, BBC, and Time-Warner. Studies show that approximately 33% of OverDrive users listen to audio books on their computer, 35% transfer to mP3s, and 29% burn to CDs.

OverDrive Media Console must be downloaded onto the computer in order to download audio books, music, or videos from OverDrive. Windows Media Player is designed to listen to songs, and therefore it doesn't have speed settings or chapter breaks.
Advantages of the OverDrive Media Console:
* Books can be navigated by chapter titles.
* The user can also change the speed of play, either slowing it down or speeding it up. The speed-up feature is good for visually impaired listeners because they can listen and comprehend at a quicker speed than sighted listeners.
* Books can be rewound.
* Play is automatically resumed from the furthest point played.
* Media Console automatically asks if you want to delete expired audio books.

The CMC Library Consortium has decided to subscribe to OverDrive in our next budget year, which begins in July. There will be a one-time setup fee, a monthly maintenance fee, and a minimum amount which must be spent per year on new audio books. I think that the OverDrive service will prove to be a valuable resource to the library.

List of Available eAudiobooks

This week I have decided to create a list on Excel of all of the audiobooks that are currently available for download on Netlibrary. Netlibrary is a website that contains over 1500 downloadable audiobooks. Patrons must register at the library first in order to access the site elsewhere. I think that having a printed list that the patrons can look through may help get them more interested in downloading audiobooks. So far I've found that there is a large selection of foreign language courses and books of the Bible, as well as mysteries and westerns. It will also help the library staff because we may be less likely to buy a book on CD if it is available to download.

Early Interviews

This week I have discussed the concept of downloadable audio books with a few of the library patrons that check out books on cassette and/or CD. These patrons have been interested in the idea, but slightly hesitant about the technology involved. None of the patrons I've talked to so far have a portable audio device at home, but they do all have a computer with internet access. One of the patrons wanted to know if the books could be downloaded onto a CD rather than a portable player since she only listens to books on CD in her car. One patron was concerned that the library would stop ordering books on CD if we started downloading them instead. None of the patrons I've talked to so far seemed interested in purchasing a portable audio player for themselves, so the library may need to get a few players to be checked out, at least until the patrons become more familiar with the technology.

Survey

Today I created a survey outline to use when interviewing patrons at the library who check out books on cassette and/or CD.

Basically, the questions on the survey are:
1. Do you have a computer at home?
2. Does the computer have internet access?
3. Do you have a portable audio player (other than an iPod) at home?
4. If no to any of the above, would you be willing to purchase these items in order to download audio books from home?
5. If no to all of the above, would you interested in checking out a preloaded portable audio player from the library?

I did some research into how other libraries are handling downloadable audio books and found that many of them do actually check out the audio players to the patrons with the books already loaded on them.

Action Learning Project

I have decided that my action learning project is going to focus on downloadable audiobooks. Books on cassette and CD are extremely popular at my library (Rutherford County Library). Patrons are constantly requesting that we add to our collection of audiobooks. However, the library is running out of shelf space to store all of the books on cassette and CD. We have been forced to discard many of the books on cassette to make room for new books on CD. As part of my project, I hope to increase the interest of the patrons in downloading audiobooks. I also hope to decrease the intimidation that many of these patrons feel in using this relatively new technology.