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Downloadable Media for Libraries (audiobooks, music, movies oxfordcomma* and more
Ellan Jenkinson of the Richland County Public Library
Works in Extension Services
*I approve
So, why did I take this class when I’ve done the Staff Development Thingy and I had to do the mp3 thing and then we were supposed to already have experimented with NetLibrary? Well, as I recall, I didn’t really enjoy the mp3 thing. I downloaded music and a short children’s book. I “checked out” e-books and read them. I even have the mp3 player I got for finishing the staff development thingy and there is more stuff on it. But do I really use these things? No. I can waste time perfectly well on the computer without downloading stuff to read/listen to. I have sound going on most of the time in my life and I don’t really need to have it constantly. Every now and then I like a little silence. So, why did I take this class? I guess I figured I was missing something.
Downloadable Media consists of
Print, audio, and video content that can be downloaded via the internet
E-books, podcasts, digital audiobooks, music, games, video files, etc.
It’s been made possible by larger bandwidth and ubiquitous Portable Listening Devices, libraries offering e-books and digital audiobooks to which has been added music and video titles (well, at RCPL anyway)
Digital audiobooks are downloaded and listened to on a pc, laptop, or what is laughingly designated Personal Listening Devices (PLDs, such as mp3 players)
Why would anyone want this?
Benefits: 24/7 access for patrons (Hey! I’m often up late unable to sleep because of injudicious caffeinated beverage consumption!)
They don’t take up extra shelf space (RCPL is running out of space despite four floors of 1 acre each!)
Downloadable digital media (DDM) can’t be returned late, so there are no fines (win for patron)
There are no moving parts (none the library is responsible for anyway) to get lost, separated, or damaged
Pulls in new patrons (who just aren’t “book people”)
Men can safely “check out” books they would ordinarily not be caught dead taking to the Circ Desk, like Nora Roberts stuff.
RCPL “encourages” (which is a nice way of putting that they discourage the opposite) patrons to download at home so as not to tie up the library computers, suck bandwidth, or attach foreign devices to the computers.
RCPL is now phasing out audiocassettes. Who isn’t?
RCPL first added DDM in 2005. They use NetLibrary/Recorded Books. They started out with 500 titles plus the Pimsleur Language Series (which is surprisingly popular, but not if you consider how hard it has been to keep up with the demand for books on cd or language instruction materials), the Bible, and a “bonus” of 200 “classics.” 30 titles are added each month. After a year they decided to separately add 20 titles/month of children’s and YA (don’t they prefer to be called “teens”?) titles. Usage was initially low, but had increased substantially over time. They’re running about 450 titles/month downloaded.
In 2007 they added OverDrive. While NetLibrary runs very much like a lending library, individual titles are “purchased from” OverDrive, but stay in the keeping of OD. So, only one person can check out a title at one time. RCPL has never offered e-books.
Note to self: Create sign for language area: “We Have Language Instruction in Digital Audio Format That Are Always In!”
Promote One Book, One Community with a digital copy!
Sign for Summer: “Summer Reading List Books Available in DAF!”
OverDrive brands their site to look like yours to “fool” the public into thinking the site is actually a part of your library. They’ll spend ages setting that up.
Why go to OD when you have NetLibrary? Well, OD had titles NL didn’t (NetLibrary is a part of Recorded Books and so they use only the ones they have licensed), as well as music and video. There is no annual fee. Titles are purchased outright and there is a one-time set-up fee. Some titles can be burned to cd. Video titles are limited, but they have Rabbit Ears and Weston Woods videos which come with public performance rights (noted right on the website). RCPL only has 6 music titles and they don’t seem to be going anywhere. They have less than 200 titles from OD total.
What equipment do you need to enjoy this bounty?
A computer with internet access (how much does that run?)
Windows Media Player Version 9 or higher
For OD you need to download (for free and only once) their media console program
From a pc you can transfer to a laptop, mp3 player, PDA, or a SmartPhone.
There is a wide variety of compatible devices (check out the Best Buy web page)
What about them Portable Listening Devices? What do you need?
It must be able to play .wma files (so an iPod is right out, which makes many patrons unhappy and is an on-going issue with RCPL)
It must be compatible with Windows Media Player 9 and up
Optimum Usage requires:
512 MB minimum storage
Pause/resume functions or a book marking feature
Both services test and recommend devices. There is a list on the NL website of compatible and incompatible that is continually updated. In their experience, RCPL has had the best results with brands Creative and Samsung. All iPod and Mac products are incompatible.
“Challenges” (RCPL avoids the word “problems” – ha ha ha ha ha)
Staff was largely unfamiliar with downloadable media and unable to answer questions (not to mention the eye-rollers you get in every group)
Patrons were also unfamiliar with the medium
Solutions
The staff was given hands-on training and an opportunity to play (we had the latter)
Mp3 players were purchased for staff use and demos (now, there’s an idea! Have an mp3 at all branch desks to show a patron how to do it!)
They provided a “quick start” bookmark for patrons and staff (pretty huge! You’d need an atlas to justify the size of that thing – Forgot to pick up)
They did demos for patrons at library events (book festival booth, book clubs – so we could do that at Fran’s book groups or when we appear at some public function. I’m learning lots of stuff!)
Yet More Challenges and Solutions
Whaddaya call this? They started calling them Digital Audiobooks, but they added other media so now they call them Downloadable Media. All the terms seem to be lengthy and awkward as well as unfamiliar. This makes them difficult to label on bookmarks, etc. So they still haven’t hit on the perfect name.
Where do you put it on your website? RCPL put them in at least three places: the main page, the a/v page, and the Book Buzz page. What, no blog page? We blogged ours!
Do you promote them together or separately? They opted to do separate PR (because they operate so differently) but put them together on the website. Now, what the heck is PlayAway??!!
Those who don’t have the computer/internet connection/mp3s, can check out books on PlayAway. It’s a digital player pre-loaded with a particular book. Of course, the patron needs to provide their own earbuds/headphones (or can purchase from library for $1) and it runs on AAA batteries that need changing, sometimes right in the middle of a book (but they’ll do that at the desk, or the patron can insert their own). This is also on the webpage with the DDM.
Technical Challenges
They’ve had problems with patron access to the NL site because of the patron’s firewall (been there! You have to tell your firewall to accept from that web address as I have done with SecondLife.)
RCPL seems to have this problem with NL co-branding (bundling) with Recorded Books, causing confusion in their patrons. We don’t have that on our NL, but we have e-books and I’ve found that annoying that when I’m looking for an audiobook, I don’t want to see the e-books and vice versa.
They also have had a problem with the advertised download times (how long it will take to download the item) not coinciding with Reality. That turned out to be a NL server problem … er, challenge.
Solutions
Patrons are encouraged to set up their NL account at the library (they have to at our library).
They have an on-going dialog with NL about joint site improvement.
When launching OD, they did far more development and testing (by staff) before going live. We had a couple of months playing with NL before it went live. I wonder how many of us actually played with it?
Challenges Continued
iPod incompatibility: The Most Popular Portable Listening Device does not work with library media.
Y’see, iPods don’t support the files with the .wma copyright protection. They have their own proprietary copyright protection (also used by Mac computers), .AAC. If you want media, you have to go to iTunes (they have books and video as well). Public domain materials are available in both formats.
Solution?
There isn’t one. No library products are compatible with iPods.
Apple and MicroSquash need to reach an agreement.
In the meantime, MS has muddied the waters by creating another proprietary player: Zune! Boo to Gates with nobs on!
Other Options
PlayAways, the self-playing audiobooks where there is no downloading necessary; computers, internet, portable devices unnecessary; titles are purchased individually, prices are comparable to book titles on cd (or less!) And you can buy them at airports! (But they need batteries! They have parts that can be lost or broken! This is a step almost backwards! Book technology is so easy!)
Free Sources
Project Gutenberg: http://gutenberg.org/audio/
Librivox: http://www.librivox.org/
All titles in public domain and usually read by volunteers without the proprietary copyright protection, so anyone can use it.
That’s the solution! Undermine the soandsos!
The Future
Digital natives (cute – I call them mip3rsnappers) are coming of age and that will raise the demand for downloadable content
We’ll keep having to deal with compatibility issues and changing formats (let’s go back to Betamax!)
Library’s need to be more away of digital copyright issues, and not make the errors of the libraries that set up NetFlix accounts and iTunes accounts.
Hands-On:
We visited the RCPL website (which I compared to ours) to see what their DDM looked like. Get this, they have to enter their library card and PIN numbers before they get the log-in (which is confusing, but RCPL likes to remind them that this service is Brought To You By The Library. Hoo-hoo! Wait till they find out that they don’t have to do the card and PIN number!)
She showed us the Recorded Books/NetLibrary confusion, but we just don’t have that.
NetLibrary can renew a title once without downloading. Of course, they can check it out again (forcing a second download) and practically have it out in perpetuity, but whom does that hurt?
Also, they are limited to having out 10 downloaded items, and these are out for the 21 day “circulation” so they can’t be checked in early (same here). They could even set up multiple accounts (with different and probably bogus e-mail addresses) to get around that, but, again, where’s the harm? It’s all good for statistics.
What is the effect of this on book circ statistics? Well, it’s not the same thing. It’s more like a CD check out, so it might affect those.
As for statistics, the only info RCPL gets is the number of downloads in a given period, not a title by title accounting, although exceptionally popular titles might get a separate stat.
Looking more closely at OverDrive. Neither OD nor NL show up on the patron’s library card. Public Performance permission right on the individual entry! Also, it says whether or not you can burn the title to a cd (this is set by the publisher). There may be a limit to how many times you transfer the title, and it says it there as well. This is also set by the publisher and the numbers are all over the map, one time, 21 times, 8 times. This could be handy if you want to teach a class. You can check it out once and download it to a specified number of devices for your students.
Holds, which lined up quickly on OD, last for 48 hours after the notice (by e-mail message) and then the chance to check it out is lost and it “moves” on to the next in line.
The program that you download to use OD enables you to transfer directly to your device without going through Media Player. Easy use. You can also download only parts of the title, to save time. It could take ages to download a whole thing. Maybe you only want to listen to the first four chapters. Maybe you don’t have the room on your PLD.
And you can do this from anywhere that you have access to the internet. One patron’s family was downloading material from vacation in
One confusing thing about OverDrive is that it is more like shopping than checking out material. You put items into your “cart” and actually checking them out is a separate operation. This, however, gives you time to look over your cart and decide if you really want something in case something better comes along (remember, you can’t check something back in early).
Ellan thinks there is more use of OD than NL, but then the staff was more prepared when they went live and OD themselves provided more promotional materials. They do sort of cross-pollinate each other, though. Awareness of one will increase awareness of the other.
Noted on web page: OD E-Book of the Month. Ha ha. Which one is that, the one title that isn’t on hold? This is a good idea for NL, though. You can feature an e-book/digital audiobook each week/month on your web page just to increase awareness. A picture of a book and a blurb attracts more attention than the blog chatting about a new service (which is now way down on the blog list and away from view). Also, you can feature the new e-titles each month as they arrive (or the “best of”).
Ellan’s PLD is a Zen by Creative with 6 GB memory and cost about $170 when she bought it. She loves it. It has a bookmarking feature.
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