Comments on: Audio books, part III: The library and computer experience

By: LINDA

LINDA — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:58:11 +0000

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!

By: Megan

Megan — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 22:58:11 +0000

Another person chiming in with “Thanks” for the tip on “opening with OverDrive” instead of downloading. Should it really have to be this complicated?

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:19:28 +0000

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

By: John

John — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 14:03:22 +0000

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?

By: David

David — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:47:53 +0000

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?

By: John

John — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:36:10 +0000

Note: The previous “John” is not me, John Miedema, but the above advert is not entirely unrelated, so it can stay.

By: John

John — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:03:41 +0000

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.

By: David

David — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:50:10 +0000

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.

By: Wendell

Wendell — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 20:41:12 +0000

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.

By: walt crawford

walt crawford — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 22:45:50 +0000

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.