Week 9, Thing 22:Audio books and e-books

Many of the sites for downloading free books seem to be using the same sources: 1) so called public domain books whose copyrights have expired (the “classics,”), 2) online computer and technical information, and 3) books being created online specifically for an internet audience, many of them collaboratively. Now audio versions of public domain books are being pod cast on Librivox, many of them originally published by the Gutenberg project. What a great collaborative project! This has immediate applications for my own school's special ed and EL populations. Audible, Audiobooks and Itunes seem to be the biggest sources for commercial audio books, and many people just download right to an MP3 player. Barnes and Noble has gotten into the audio book business, and Recorded Books (one of the biggest sources for libraries) will now “rent” as well as sell. Right now in my own library, 100+ titles from Recorded books go out regularly, so I know the “market” is there. I have not had the online space to offer e-books from my own library, but that may be changing. The disadvantage is that, like a regular book book, only one user at a time can “check out” an e-book. The biggest controversy in e-books and online audio books, of course, is copyright vs. “the right to know/read/hear.” Google has run into a lot of controversy with its plan to begin scanning and sharing whole university libraries, but it makes sense to me, especially when one or two libraries hold a few rare volumes. The most blatant case of scholarly stinginess in the last fifty years was the small group of scholars who held the Dead Sea Scrolls hostage, not sharing their work for almost forty years, until a graduate student obtained photographs and a journal published them, forcing the controlling group to open up access to the documents. As a beginning freelance writer, however, I clearly see the other side of the story – the importance of protecting and being paid for your work. We have indeed entered a brave new world! Of all of the online e-book and audio book providers, I liked NetLibrary the best, probably because it is connected to a trusted library group, OCLC, and that is the service I will use when bandwidth permits in my own library. Hmm, I'll have to rethink that "no ipods" in the library rule, won't I?