Comments on: Potential, Realized

By: Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:58:02 +0000

Not having an iPod myself, I’m more pushing this because it’s a better way to serve patrons – or rather, a way to serve more patrons than before. But, almost two years into this service, I hardly ever hear from patrons trying to figure out why they can’t use Overdrive with an iPod anymore. I think because of the original model, be it the fault of Overdrive or Apple, iPod owners have just been conditioned to know that Overdrive is not something they can use.

Now that they can, I’m planning on promoting this heavily, to get the iPodders to give Overdrive a second look. Hopefully, the increased visibility and use will be a driving force to get the MP3 format more widely-used with Overdrive and publishers. Counterproductive from a business standpoint, I know, but I also think that once people get a taste of MP3 files, they will not want to go back to WMAs.

By: jessamyn west

jessamyn west — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:31:42 +0000

I’ll be a lot more psyched when they have a full range of titles. For now, having to buy titles in both formats is still annoying as hell and is really giving ipod users a pretty small selection. Once MP3 titles are fully available, the next question is why anyone would get any other file format? I’ve been unimpressed with the way Overdrive has handled this, from the slow rollout to the way they graphically represent the difference between the file types. Why can’t they just say an MP3 plays on *anything* and a WMV file only plays in a window environment. Representing this with 12 graphics seems crazymaking from a UI perspective.

By: Mary Kyle

Mary Kyle — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:05:08 +0000

There is a severe limit to the mp3 audiobooks. Only older titles are available for iPods, it’s basically the ones that can be burned to CD. I work at PLCMC in North Carolina and we have both OverDrive and NetLibrary. I don’t have an iPod myself because of that. I supply my husband with nearly 60 hours of audio every week and we picked his player so he could use the 2 services the library had. We also have Audible books and a lot of podcasts to keep him with things to listen to all week. However, I have a Mac and had to do a dual boot just to keep getting his audiobooks since 2 sources are/were tied to Windows.

I still wish that Audible would work with Libraries like OverDrive and NetLibrary. Their books all have DRM but are available in iTunes’ Fairplay and Windows WMA DRM schemes. Which you get depends on the software you use to download. They’ve had this for years and their file size is also a lot smaller, with the same or better quality. They were purchased by Amazon in the past year and I keep hoping they will offer audiobooks to libraries too.

By: Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 21:33:19 +0000

@Amanda: I’m not sure what kind of back-end changes are required to support this, but I do know Overdrive is doing this roll-out in a controlled way. The Boston Library started offering mp3s months ago, and it was tough waiting for us to catch up – and it’s only 30 miles away.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 00:12:41 +0000

Why is Overdrive rolling this out so slowly? Down in Texas we are still limited to WMA. In a military community with lots of inflow from other geographic areas, it is frustrating to tell people that it we are using the same service they are used to, but do not have the same capabilities!

By: laura

laura — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:05:10 +0000

We're a NetLibrary shop when it comes to audio books, and I'm looking forward to the supposed release of some titles as mp3s sometime in the near future. In the meantime, I point people to some other options. They're mostly public domain and amateur, but they're both free as in beer and free as in DRM free, and I like that I'm able to point people to that kind of content (and thus, perhaps, subtly make a point). It's usually in the top 5 most popular pages on our site, and we get tons of people searching for "ipod + audiobook." I don't know if they're happy with what they find, but there sure are a lot of them out there. I'm glad at least some content providers are taking notice.

By: april

april — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:33:39 +0000

Hey there..new reader here. I work at Deschutes Public Library in Central Oregon, and we hopped right on with the MP3s through Overdrive once they were available. Not thrilled with the limited selection, but that’ll grow (and the patrons are happy to check out whatever we can get.)

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:34:12 +0000

Everyone’s circulation jumped for the Greater Phoenix Digital Library Consortium once mp3s were available. Most of the mp3s were checked out within a day of its release.

There is actually four different ways you can hack the drm to get permanent check-outs too.