The Boulder Public Library system owns 1,500 audiobooks on CDs. But walk into a library on any given day, and you’re lucky to find a dozen on the shelf.
Audiobook users are among the most ravenous and regular of library patrons, hauling out armloads at a time for weary commutes, tedious school bus rides or long-distance trucking.
Evolving download technology is beginning to solve the problem for Denver-area libraries, even as they strain to keep up with change during times of tight budgets. Boulder is signing up 20 new customers a day for a free download service that allows patrons to put audiobooks on an MP3 player from the comfort of their own home – and this without any advertising of the month-old “OverDrive” program.
Denver, a national leader in library downloads, has watched use of its audiobook service over the Internet increase more than 300 percent in a year.
“They seem to be going like hot cakes,” said Patti Bateman, services manager for Aurora Public Library. Aurora employs a cooperative network less embellished than OverDrive, called NetLibrary.
New technology always brings with it, though, questions of compatibility and fairness. None of the area audiobook services – nor the movie download service Denver will launch in March – works with Apple’s iPod, the most popular portable device.
The iPod has 65 to 80 percent of the market, yet Apple and its book supplier, Audible, have not yet agreed to work with libraries or make their devices compatible with books downloaded through a Windows- based system. To use library downloads, you must have a Windows-based MP3 player, or burn downloaded books to a CD, then rip those CDs onto a computer running iTunes.
“The one thing that bugs me about the library program is the two hours I spent trying to get the audiobooks onto my daughter’s iPod,” said Denver resident Mark Hughes.
The family has listened to hundreds of books from CDs, and Hughes sometimes plays downloaded books through his office computer. He doesn’t plan to buy a Windows-friendly MP3 player. Until the books work with iPods, he said, “we’ll stick with the physical CDs.”
Libraries are as frustrated as their customers.
“Half our staff has iPods,” said Michelle Jeske, Denver Library’s manager of Web-information services. “We have devices that we can’t even use our own product on.”
Some smaller libraries have taken the radically consumer-friendly step of buying iPods, loading books on them from iTunes and Audible, and then lending out the whole iPod to customers. None of the metro-area libraries can afford that luxury.
The standoff over digital book rights is similar to previous manufacturer wars over VHS vs. Beta for videotapes, or the current Blue Ray vs. HD- DVD standard for the next generation of DVDs, said Marc Musyl, a copyright expert with the law firm Greenberg Traurig. Apple sees no hurry to cooperate while it’s winning 75 percent of the market share.
“The end result is that consumers, including libraries, suffer while the high-stakes compatibility war is waged, until a winner emerges,” he said.
The OverDrive service, used by Denver, Boulder and many others to ease downloads to customers, says it is working hard on agreements with Apple. “We’re eager to have a solution,” said OverDrive’s Steve Potash.
In the meantime, he said, surveys show one-third of library patrons listen to the downloads on their PC, another third transfers them to an MP3 player, and the final third burns them to CD for use in the car or elsewhere.
Library officials assume Apple will come onboard. And they’re stunned at the popularity of downloads even while the biggest segment of the market is excluded.
“It makes sense for us – we’re an online and wired town,” said Melinda Mattingly of the Boulder Public Library. “It’s hard for libraries, as nonprofits, to move this fast and keep up with changes. But here’s something we can afford to test out.”
Bonuses abound for users and librarians. Anyone with a valid library card can access the audiobooks any time, any place with a computer, even while traveling. No books are lost, and employees don’t have to shelve or repair materials. (Movie downloads are a special attraction for libraries; many city systems are weary of damaged DVDs.)
And despite long menus of how-tos on the library websites for OverDrive and NetLibrary, technology complaints among customers have been low.
“Thirty people signed up for OverDrive last Saturday, and we had only one ‘Help’ question to a librarian,” Mattingly said.
Denver’s user surveys show an older and more female audience than librarians expected, Jeske said. The heaviest MP3 users for music have traditionally been younger males.
Downloads are a consumer-friendly way to prepare the public for other library changes that may not be so easy to navigate, Mattingly said. Google has set the goal of putting every page of every book into a massive database; Amazon already has portions of many books available online. The public’s use of electronics to access printed matter will only grow.
“Everybody thinks they know what a library does,” Mattingly said. “But in the last five years, it’s all changed.”
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
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To register for downloadable audiobooks from local libraries, try the following websites:
Aurora:
Denver:
Boulder:
Douglas County:
Jefferson County: (Audio book downloads begin in March)
To find out if your MP3 player is compatible with library books:
