Friday, June 15, 2007

Week Nine, Thing 22

I've been familiar with Overdrive since CCPL started subscribing to it some time ago. I even went to Digipalooza last summer, which was Overdrive's first annual conference. It was in Cleveland, home of Overdrive, and they had speakers that discussed content, the future of e- and audio books, how libraries used the content, and just what the company offered. Personally, I don't (yet!) have a device that will play Overdrive files (darn that iPod!). Naturally, I didn't bother checking out any audio books for myself. I did once try to download a documentary on the Ramones. It was going to take the better part of my life to download (even on a T1), so I quickly aborted that mission.

Since I had no earthly idea that Project Gutenburg had audio books, I decided to check that out. Neat! First, I had to check out the computer-generated books. I knew it would be hilarious, but it was WAY funnier than I expected. People are supposed to listen to that? Then I checked out the human-generated audio books, because that's more realistic. They sound just fine. I checked out E. Nesbit's Five Children and It. I had to read it in library school and I have a fondness for the story. So, the moral of the story is, kiddies, if you wait until the night before your assignment is due to read your classic, try an audio book from here!

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