Monday, November 26, 2007

# 22 Audiobooks

Downloadable audio books appear to be a resource that will expand much more in the future as more and more books become available online. The concept of the subscription services Netlibrary and Overdrive that enable libraries to purchase audio files so library members can download them on to their mp3 players is very interesting - especially the fact that the audio files are automatically deleted from the mp3 player at the end of the loan period!

I had a look around the World eBook Fair site http://worldebookfair.com/Mp3eBooks.htm, especially the Gutenberg's Audio eBook Collection and The Sound of Literary Works Collection. I had a listen to some of the The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde, Briar Rose by the Brothers Grimm, and The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen. Just as in the audio books in the library now, the skill and quality of the reader makes a huge difference to your enjoyment of the story. The titles are generally of very old books at present.

The World eBook Fair site also has a section marked Project Gutenberg of Australia, but the page is under construction. Even though I had read about Project Gutenberg before, it was interesting to follow some of the links about it - http://www.gutenberg.org/ and a site with some of the history of the project - http://promo.net/pg/.

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