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We've been using the Overdrive for more than a year and and their site still says their titles don't work with iPods. Did I miss a memo? Or is this a marketing sleight of hand?

Many Library audiobook downloads will work with every MP3 player EXCEPT for iPod. This may be changing, but this was still a problem/backlash as of the last Texas Library Association session I attended dealing with audiobooks and new media this summer.

Overdrive has content available that will work with ipods - it's the MP3 collection. It's Apple who should open up their format, not Overdrive. If your library has the regular Overdrive but not the new MP3 books, you should request them.

not affiliated etc. but a happy consumer

OverDrive now has a selection of titles available in MP3, a format that works on iPods and many other devices that can't play the WMA/DRM format. Libraries subscribing to OverDrive's system need to buy titles in this format and have their OverDrive websites updated, and several have already done so, including the Boston Public Library and the District of Columbia Public Library.

It's the publishers who decide whether or not to provide this format. They have a right to be concerned with how they provide access to their content, as do the authors and performers who create that content, so most have wanted to make their titles available only with Digital Rights Management to limit access. But DRM often limits access beyond what is actually intended by limiting the devices that can play these files, so it's great that publishers are starting to make things available in unprotected MP3. When publishers see that librarians and library users use these titles responsibly, more will open up their content and provide it in this format...I hope so, anyway!

So while Overdrive has bowed to the fact that more people have iPods than all the other mp3 players combined and released some things in mp3 format but only for people who are using Windows computers. They still haven't released software that will let those of us who use Mac computers instead of Windows download any of their audio books. So Mac users are still left out. (Something I find particularly troubling with content offered by PUBLIC libraries.)

For those of you who think that it is Apple that is using a closed format ... that is simply not true. The issue is that Overdrive and other companies (such as TBS television) have chosen to use Microsoft's digital rights management ... which Microsoft won't share with Apple. Overdrive could have chosen to distribute their products using a platform independent rights management scheme, but they chose not to. And certainly TBS television chose to use a format that excludes Mac when they could have used Flash or Quicktime and made their stuff available to everybody.