Downloadable Books: It's a Love/Hate Thing

Jen Maney -- School Library Journal, 12/3/2008

My library subscribes to OverDrive and NetLibrary, which both offer ebooks and downloadable audiobooks.

What I Love

Audiobooks absolutely rock. People love them. Giving them another format makes some people quiver with excitement. They don’t have to haul three 10-CD sets on vacation anymore. Hurray! Portable, small, convenient. This is what I love most, what your customers love most, and what you probably love most.

NetLibrary has a large collection of publicly accessible ebooks, including classics ranging from Virgil to Mark Twain. When those classics are all checked out, and the 10th kid comes in with a couple days to spare to write a paper, these ebooks come in mighty handy. Kids are not nearly as picky as we are about reading on a screen. They also have a lot of classics available as audiobooks. Our most popular classic audiobook is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, closely followed by Pride and Prejudice.

OverDrive lets you pick which ebook titles you buy. You select them just like you would select print titles, so you can tailor your collection to your community’s needs. This is such an effective model that NetLibrary has recently announced a similar purchasing plan for their customers.

Pimsleur courses are available as audiobooks. NetLibrary has these, and they’re great for high school kids who need some extra help learning a language. Our most popular title is beginner’s Spanish, not surprisingly, since I’m based out of Tucson, AZ. It’s been checked out more than 225 times in the past three years—without needing any replacement parts.

What I Hate

DRM. You’ve probably read about it before. Digital rights management (DRM) imposed by book publishers on digital content, means that neither you nor your customer ever has a real copy of the book. You cannot freely distribute, share, or copy the material. How un-library is this?

Ebooks are almost as expensive as regular books. The advantage, of course, is that they don’t wear out, so you don’t have replacement costs. But, seriously, I want them to be a lot cheaper than paper so that I can get more copies of them. It seems counterintuitive to have to go on a waiting list for a downloadable book. Isn’t it… um… digital?

There’s a learning curve with ebooks and downloadable audio. Pity those poor patrons who bought an MP3 player just to use your downloadable audiobooks. They’re in for a real treat—installing software, figuring out how to download the books, figuring out how to play them, and if they’re lucky, figuring out how to get audiobooks on to their MP3 player or iPod. You will spend oodles of time helping people, troubleshooting with them, handholding, and encouraging them to continue.

Audiobooks don’t work on Macs. Yes, you can now transfer some titles to iPods and iPhones, but if you’re a Mac user, you’re out of luck. You must use a PC for the download.

The Verdict?

It’s still out. OverDrive used to be a nightmare to use, but its software is now much easier to use. NetLibrary is revamping its software, too, and the demo was pretty impressive. We need DRM-free titles. Libraries aren’t used to this DRM stuff, and we don’t like it. And we don’t like turning our Mac users away. They don’t like it either. In a perfect world, all formats would work on all computers and all devices. I hope we get there someday… soon.