Thing 22: Downloadable audiobooks

I was already pretty familiar with downloading NetLibrary and OverDrive audiobooks to a computer, but had not transferred them to a portable device. I got the OverDrive audiobook downloaded to my home computer just fine, but could not transfer it to my MP3 player. I was successful with a title from Project Gutenberg, however. Some months ago, I signed up to be a proofreader for Project Gutenberg. This is a fascinating endeavor and, since I like editing and I like making books available, I thought it would be a great project to be involved in. I haven't requested an assignment yet, but I can't wait to get started.

HCL has a loyal following of customers who download audiobooks regularly and contact the library if they have problems. OverDrive in particular has a good selection of titles, many of them requiring that a hold be placed, which attests to their popularity, but the Recently Returned section makes it easy to find something to listen to. Unfortunately, only e-books are currently available from NetLibrary as NetLibrary and Recorded Books have still not come to an agreement on their distribution. Audiobooks are a wonderful companion for commuters and anyone traveling a distance, and a great service to our customers.

Thing 21: Podcasts

Many of the podcasts listed at podcastalley.com required a podcast aggregator to listen to them. I had variable success with my Yahoo audio search, having trouble narrowing it down and finding more current podcasts. podcast.net had the best search tools and results. Dowling Library created a very nicely-done, professional, and interesting series of conversations with authors.

This is not the most fascinating of podcasts, but it has to do with Adobe, PDFs, and open standards vs. open source. There are RSS feeds for the large collection of O'Reilly (as in the computer books) network articles, including this one with Bruce Chizen, the CEO of Adobe. Unfortunately they sounded computer-generated instead of being live conversations.

I have felt ever since I returned from CIL that there is an important place for podcasts as a way to promote and distribute library programs to a wider population. We could reach people that are unable to come to a library building because they are physically unable, are homebound, do not have transportation, have schedules that do not coincide with library events, prefer a media version to a live version, or simply are unaware that the program took place.