#22 Audiobooks

Well the only question here is when will we get downloadable audiobooks in our own library!

Every now and then I visit audible books sites the commercial homes of downloadable audio books and decide once again that it is just too expensive for me. Besides the content is heavily skewed to America and I happen to want a lot of UK books.

I've tried noncommercial sites too, once a book is out of copywrite it is fair game. Free audio books I have found tend to be fairly dated. Even poetry sometimes comes with problems of having to listen through a whole lot of guff that accompanies every individual poem you download
I like the poetry archive though and Project Gutenberg has some new titles since last I looked but even so ...I hope our library consortia roll out Audible.com for us soon.

However I do have some old favourites in my itunes library and enjoy them...far easier than loading in audio books on CD.

#15 Library 2.0

I just read the OCLC Newsletter and I got even more excited than the next person; because I was looking at what it didn’t say as much as what it did. Where was a mention of picture books or westerns or even sci-fi for heaven’s sake?

Will they make 'print on demand' books in a comfy to hold, pleasant to turn the pages of, small size format? Who has seen one that does not look like a spiral bound A4 computer manual? Guarantee me a book as a well designed object as well as an information source and I will be a convert.

What about kids who read screens not books? I can only flip between four screens at a time on my machine. Researching just about anything I can have dozens of open books and bookmarked (old style) books within arms reach. (True confession time I even printed out all the 23 things to make the activities easier).

I’ve got this fossil feeling and I don’t like it very much. What does a really ' up there and with it' library hold on its shelves in the way of fiction. I just can’t imagine it. I can see the reference collections going but are we suggesting that our book collections will no longer be in demand as patrons positively choose e-books and audio books and other rich web based activities as substitute activities for old fashioned reading. If that is the case I will shut up right now. Is it? Help me out folks.

Lost…the plot…lets hurry up and get on to wikis …I dig wikis!