Starting today, June 13, The New York Public Library will launch a digital audio book collection allowing cardholders to download audiobooks from the Internet, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. On the subway or in the sun, users can listen to a wide range of fiction and nonfiction books on portable devices, CD players, or via their PCs and laptops.
Listeners of all ages can choose from a selection of 700 titles in fiction, narrative nonfiction, business, biography, self-help, and language instruction. Available titles range from recent bestsellers such as “The 9/11 Commission Report” and “The Jane Austen Book Club” to classics such as Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” and Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.”
Here’s the library’s press release of the new offering.
almost perfect
But it doesn’t seem to be iPod friendly and since they have 76% of the market for digital music players that seems more important then online access.
A neighboring library offers digital audiobooks without the online bit but it is iPod friendly. I’d think I’d shoot for that instead.
Re:almost perfect
The neighboring library buys their content from Audible.com and seems to be lending the audiobooks on dedicated devices (not just downloading the audiobook onto your own device.) Apple’s method of accepting files for the ipod through Itunes only will have to loosen up IMHO.