Audio books, part III: The library and computer experience
- Audio books: The prices are insane!
- Audio books, part II: iPod content for libraries from local writers
- Audio books, part III: The library and computer experience
- Audio books, conclusion: Rock stars, the dark side, back to the light, slow reading
“I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful one hundred percent. Theodore Seuss Geisel, Horton Hatches the Egg, 1940.” Thus opens the audio book version of Water for Elephants, the novel by Sara Gruen, narrated by David LeDoux and John Randolph Jones. One couldn’t ask for better narration.
This is part III of a series on a first-timer’s experience with audio books. In this installment, I tell of my experience obtaining an audio book from my local library to play on my computer. (See also Part I on prices and Part II on players). Here are the highlights:
Rural libraries have audio books too. Many public libraries these days allow patrons to download audio books for free. I am a patron at two public libraries: London Public Library and Middlesex County Library. I knew that London had audio books because they recently put on a promotion, so I used their resources. I also wrongly assumed that my local branch of the Middlesex library would not have them because they are a small rural branch. What a silly assumption. All they need is a link! I only just now confirmed that my local branch does have audio books for download; a similar setup to London. But what follows is based on the London Public Library.
A separate stream of processing for audio books. The audio books link was prominently displayed on the home page of the library. Both the catalogue and my account were completely separate from the book catalogue and my usual patron account. When I placed a hold on a title, I had to enter my email address, even though the library currently uses my email for other notifications. Given that the URL for the audio books belongs to the Overdrive company, I assume they are handling all of this processing. It unnerves me a little that a private company is handling the library’s audio book collection; what is the point of the library in this? I can think of two things: a promoter of the resources, a funder for their particular patron group. Hmmm.
Good usability. The catalogue search itself was a pleasant experience. If only the library OPAC looked so good! Overdrive clearly put some thought into usability. I did not find any titles from my “toread” list, but I found one title recommended by a friend, Water for Elephants. I won’t dwell on the scarcity of titles. As I was recently informed, it will take a level of demand before publishers make a significant quantity of titles available.
Artificial exclusivity. My selected title was not currently available, so I placed a hold on it. It struck me as odd that I would have to place a hold on a digital resource. After all, making an extra copy of a digital resource does not cost additional money. I know, I’m being simplistic. The rights holders have to impose some kind of exclusivity on the product so that people will pay more to get more copies. Still, it irks. I was emailed a couple days later that my title was available for download. Nice. I was told I could only have it for fourteen days. Well, I may be a slow reader, but I suppose I can listen faster. Last note on exclusivity — if I finish early, I can’t return it before the “return” date to let someone else have it earlier.
Downloading and installing. The first step required that I download and install the Overload software; no sweat. The second step required me to “register” the software. This wasn’t registration. It was an upgrade to my Windows Media Player so that I would have the right security patch to prevent copying. For some reason, I had to perform the upgrade twice before it worked. Step three involved downloading and playing the audio book. I guess I screwed up here by first downloading the book then trying to browse to it from inside Overdrive. I kept getting an error message: “Unable to acquire a license the play the selected title. The requested license is either invalid or already acquired.” I browsed the library help files, and Googled the error message, but nothing worked. In the end, I tried downloading the book again, but this time I opened it with Overdrive rather than saving it to disk. It worked.
A quality product. I have only listened to some of the book, but the narrators are excellent, especially John Randolph Jones. Getting good actors to read the parts is certainly worth a few extra dollars. But I’m getting it for free from my library. Thanks LPL!
Get an MP3 player. I started listening at my desktop computer. I have a nice chair nearby in which to recline. It is sort of like watching television. Porting it around requires a laptop, though most laptops are bigger than books. It occurs to me too that one of the reasons we relax and read is to get away from our computers. Really, if I’m going to do this right, I would have to buy an MP3 player. Not today.
There are my observations about my first time obtaining an audio book from the library and listening to it on my computer. Overall the quality of the listening experience outweighed the hassles of getting the item. I still want to get an audio book on my iPod, and that will be the subject of my fourth and final post in this series.
If you figure out how to get it on an ipod let me know. I think some have figured it out. I am getting some mobile devices to see how they work with the service. Once I have experimented I will post it too. Thanks for posting your experience.
John, Good post–but “artificial exclusivity” involves two issues (as I noted at librarian.net, since she commented on your post). One is the inability to return a borrowed e-audiobook early: That’s unfortunate. The other is that e-audiobooks follow the same circulating model as books, CDs, DVDs: One borrower at a time. Otherwise, in a state with universal borrowing, there’s a market for precisely one copy of an e-audiobook–and that model really doesn’t work if we expect narrators and producers to create e-audiobooks in the first place.
Yes, I know, the anti-copyright group (which I don’t believe you’re part of) argues that creative artists should make their livings some other way–bands going on tour and selling tchotchkes. That just doesn’t work for narrating and producing audiobooks. Doesn’t work very well for most writers, either: Few of us have rockstar potential. So, unless The State comes in and says who should get paid what for creative work (an unlikely future I’d just as soon leave unlikely), there has to be a middle ground on copyright, even for digital materials–and “one copy out at a time” is a model that’s worked for a long time.
The “Artificial Exclusivity” bit is interesting. Walt says the ‘one copy out at a time is a model that’s worked for a long time.’ Yes, that’s true. But the times, they are a-changing.
I wanted to say thanks for figuring out “The requested license is either invalid or already acquired”
I had downloaded the file to my desktop and then tried to open it with Overdrive, rather than using the Openwith from Firefox my webbrowser. It was a bit of a surprise, as I had already downloaded a number of audio books and even films using Overdrive, by first saving the file to the desktop, and then opening it.
Saving the file to the desktop revealed something else. When opened with notepad, its an XML file. Among other things the file specifies a base url.
In my case, the link was “http://wm.contentreserve.com/WMStore1/”. Thus, the company providing the content appears different than the library, as you have noted, however, it does not appear to be OverDrive. Considering the economics of e-books, it is probably better for the library to have another company host the e-books, as then they can pay a simple monthly fee, and not worry about how it will impact their internet connection, or setting up a server for the books.
In the future, there may be some public libraries which move to a peer-to-peer platform, to distribute the bandwidth. In the UK, the BBC already does this with TV shows. Such that the viewers are actually hosting the content and providing the bandwidth. Then, when many people want to watch a program, and try to download it, they are all actually helping one another download it, rather than overpowering the BBC server.
Also, on the artificial exclusivity, while a the OverDrive media console does not support early returns, Adobe acrobat does. While this doesn’t help with audio books, it does allow returning pdf ebooks sooner, which can help free some space on the check-out list, in case a reserve becomes available.
Many thanks again for figuring out the download trick.
David.
Audiobooks do not need to be this complicated.
Audio Pod Inc. is currently running a beta test of a revolutionary Audiobook Technology including Integrated Library, Audiobook Player and PortaPod Loader. Key features include the Drag & Drop Audiobook, Global MP3 Bookmark, email ready MP3 Bookmarks and integrated card catalog/social space website.
You can check it out at: http://www.audiopod.ca, and I am sure you will be pleasantly surprised.
Note: The previous “John” is not me, John Miedema, but the above advert is not entirely unrelated, so it can stay.
I also had this problem but it may be because downloaded the ODM file first before realising that I had to download the Overdrive Media console first. I went back and downloaded the console, updated Windows Media Player security settings etc but then got the error message when I tried to open the downloaded file with the console. However, I can’t use John’s trick and download the book again as it is already checked out to somebody else already (me actually) and it seems I will have to wait for 3 weeks until the audio book is “returned” before I or anyone else could download it again.
Incidentally,I succesfully managed to download another audio book once I had set everything up properly.
Any suggestions apart from wait 3 weeks and try again?
Hi David, that’s odd, I was able to perform a second download on the book checked out to me. How about calling the librarian to ask if he/she can manually perform a return?
Hey David,
You are probably looking up the book you want to re-download while not logged in to the digital library. Try this: First log in to the digital library using your library card number and PIN. Then instead of searching for the book, look under “My Account” and click “My Items On Digital Loan”. Your book should be listed there. Just click the Download link and re-download the title.
That’s how it works on the North Carolina Digital Library anyhow. Not sure what state you’re in.
BTW, Thank you so much John for the tip about re-downloading and opening from Firefox instead of saving the file first. I was about to go CRAZY with that invalid license error message
Another person chiming in with “Thanks” for the tip on “opening with OverDrive” instead of downloading. Should it really have to be this complicated?
THANK YOU SO MUCH! I have been struggling with this for two days. I’m ever so grateful to know we have a world of folks who share information!
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