Digital Audiobooks Can Help Kids Learn
"A-books" offer an opportunity for children with disabilities--and those without
Staff -- School Library Journal, 10/1/2000
The "a-book" has arrived. Digital audiobooks, a natural outgrowth of the technology that created downloadable MP3 music files, are beginning to appear. Several publishers are now releasing children's audiobooks in downloadable formats that are heavily encrypted and can be played on one computer at a time. Random House's Listening Library, for example, will sell up to 50 of its 300 Listening Library audiobook titles on the Audible.com Web site this year. Among the first Listening Library titles to be offered is a three-hour, 38-minute file of Christopher Paul Curtis's Newbery Medal-winning novel, Bud, Not Buddy. Listening Library Publisher Tim Ditlow says he chose Audible.com as his first distribution partner because its player software has secure encryption and is easy to use. He anticipates that as portable digital audio players improve and become less expensive--like the Diamond Rio 600--digital audiobooks should become more widely available and more appealing to children and teens. In addition, says Ditlow, "I know that a tremendous number of schools use audiobooks for kids with learning disabilities" to help bring students up to grade level. He expects that digital audiobooks, which can now be accessed from desktop computers--and soon will be accessible on many handheld devices--will become increasingly popular as a reading aid in schools. Advocacy groups for the disabled see promise in digital audiobooks as well. Janina Sajka and George Kerscher, in "Surpassing Gutenberg," an article on the American Foundation for the Blind's site at www.afb.org/ebook.html, call the coming of digital publishing a "historic opportunity" for the disabled. "Blind consumers are eager to begin using digital talking books now," they say. But a digital audiobook format truly suitable for the blind
isn't quite ready. Digital audio isn't currently available from the Library of Congress's National Library Service (NLS) for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (www.loc.gov/nls), except indirectly through Web-Braille, a digital, downloadable Braille that can be translated into audio. But NLS is preparing to distribute increasing amounts of digital materials.
By 2002, says Judy Dixon, NLS's consumer relations officer, all audio production for NLS will be done in digital format.
For more information, visit www.loc.gov/nls/guidelines.htm.
--W. M.
