NOPL offers downloads, sorta
Posted by Muffuletta
The New Orleans Public Library now offers downloads of audiobooks and eBooks, via OverDrive, which apparently has library “partners” from New York to Los Angeles. Download stuff from NOPL here, if you have an NOPL library card. This is apparently funded by the New Orleans Public Library Foundation, according to a nola.com blog post.
One of the drawbacks? Not for iPod. Per OverDrive:
Our audio titles use Windows Media DRM copyright protection technology from Microsoft Corporation. Unfortunately the iPod does not currently support copyright-protected Windows Media Audio (.wma) and video (.wmv) files. OverDrive, along with hundreds of online music and audio book providers, is hopeful that Apple and Microsoft can reach an agreement that would enable support for Microsoft-based copyright-protected materials on the iPod. To repeat, OverDrive would love nothing more than to provide content for your iPod. We urge you to contact Apple and request that they open the iPod to other copy-protected formats or license their propriety copy-protection method to third-party vendors.
Now, I’m bored to exhaustion by the whole DRM issue, so I’ve lost track of whether this falls under “it’s Steve’s fault” or “it’s the (rest of the) establishment’s fault.” I do know, however, that the whole Greater New Orleans FreeNet / NOPL on-line history starting in the early 1990s has been of hard core digi-nerds who had to be hauled kicking and screaming into the Windows era, for chrissakes, and who wouldn’t be caught dead writing any code that might be readable by an Apple product.
My only coherent thought about this is that perhaps one of NOPL’s branches with its own independent Web site could provide, if only through a raw link, access to one or more of the free audiobook services… which are compatible with that obscure “iPod” device.
August 17th, 2007 at 8:25 am
It’s a good question. While I sympathize with librarians who feel like the only way to deliver audiobooks to patrons is via a service that locks out ipod users — and again I’m with you I forget whose fault it is, I’d argue that it doesn’t *matter* whose fault it is, JUST FIX IT — the fact is there’s a lack of creative thinking here. Basically Overdrive allows libraries to “check out” audiobooks just like regular books, thanks to Windows-only DRM that allows for expiry of content, and people feel comfy with this. For some reason there’s the feeling that “free content” equals lack of quality control which you and I know is total nonsense but it becomes part of the issue. So Overdrive has content that is approved at some level and also functions like the rest of the library, in addition to having someone else write the help files. It’s also expensive, Windows-only and doesn’t work on the most popular MP3 player in the world. Watching Overdrive slowly creep into libraries without some other mitigating “here are places to get books for your ipod” effect is dispiriting. I’d love to see the iTMS get on the checkout bandwagon, but since expiring is not something that AAC files can currently do (correct me if I’m wrong here) that’s not likely on the near horizon.