Saturday 4 January 2014

Day 2: ebooks & audiobooks

This is a tough one.  The library I'm with at school hasn't jumped on board.  And all for very good reasons.  Personally though, in my home library I've been embracing audio books ever since my kids were very small - (about 10 years ago) when we were living in Spain and I had a long commute to take them to and from kindergarten every day.  We started off with Peter Pan, and we've never stopped since then.  Even now when we drive from Netherlands to Switzerland in the summer - a good 8 hour trip we'll arrive at the destination and they'll clamour to stay in the car until the chapter is over.  It's always been Naxos audio-books, as they have such wonderful voice artists, and we must have the CD of just about everything they've ever published (and if I ever have to listen to Professor Branestawn which has been on repeat mode for about 1 million time ... again ....).  I also listen to the adult ones, and "A history of the world in 10 1/2 chapters" must be one of my all time favourites - it almost demands to be read aloud.   We had a subscription to the Naxos spoken word library - and that was wonderful - the kids used to dip in and out of books every evening before going to bed - particularly the children's poetry - again something that is wonderful to hear rather than to read.

eBooks - I was an early kindle adopter, and I'm slowly but surely replacing all my old mouldy and yellowing classics with the online versions.  I love it for holiday.  I also have "overdrive" on my ipad, where I borrow books non-stop from the NLB, particularly when I'm travelling.  They also have audio-books for kids and my kids had great fun listening to the "Just William" books.

As a consumer therefore, yes, but as a librarian I know there are all sorts of issues with rights and ownership, not even to mention needing to train staff to train clients on the use thereof.  So that concludes day 2 of the challenge.

And if anyone knows how to get Gutenberg books into your Follett Destiny Catalogue - I'm all ears!

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