Ahhhhh! Technology: now playing at your (virtual) public library: e-audiobooks.

Look around you, and you'll discover more and more young adults showing off their MP3 players: those tiny, eminently portable digital audio devices that hold hundreds, even thousands, of their favorite songs. When they are new, these players are empty, with software that allows their owners to transfer audio files of their choosing from their computer directly onto their player's memory. Once a device is loaded, headphones can be attached and the player itself tucked away discreetly into a shirt pocket, where it can run nonstop if one so desires, until its contents or battery run out. With additional software it can even be adjusted to broadcast through car or home stereo speakers.

The convenience and versatility of these little powerhouses as well as the range of their memory--some can hold 60 gigabytes of information, greater than many home computers--make them a useful storage item for other types of data as well. They can gobble up whole audiobooks, for example, and play them just about everywhere, even though some are small enough in size to be attached to their owner's keychain.

With such technology just waiting to be harnessed, no wonder many major publishers are getting actively involved in producing and promoting audiobooks, which are increasingly available in digital (MP3 or WMA) format, whether purchased and delivered on disk or as downloadable media directly over the Internet. And soon, more than 6,000 e-audiobook best-sellers and literary classics from Recorded Books, Blackstone Audiobooks, Random House Publishing Group (Books on Tape, Listening Library and Living Language) and L.A. Theater Works will be made available free to school and public library patrons once their book lending institutions purchase the rights to distribute the titles through NetLibrary, the e-content technical and delivery arm of the OCLC and the first and most broadly adopted provider of its kind.

HISTORY OF THE OCLC AND NETLIBRARY

In 1969 the late Fredrick Kilgour, a distinguished librarian and academician, created the Ohio College Library Center, a resource-sharing database for local university and college libraries. In 1971, it went online and changed its name to the Online Computer Library Center. The OCLC's database, originally a simple catalog of the contents of 54 Ohio college and university libraries, expanded not just in size but in concept as technology advanced. Kilgour's nonprofit organization now houses the catalogs of thousands of libraries throughout the 50 US states and 112 different countries. Initially accessible only within libraries and of interest primarily to catalog librarians, today anybody at a PC or laptop anywhere with Internet access can find and search OCLC's main database at www.worldcat.com as easily as they already use Google. By entering their zip code, Worldcat users can not only identify the libraries closest to them with the books and media material they seek, but they can even preview, access and order some of it--which is where NetLibrary comes in.

NetLibrary, an innovative e-content pioneer and provider, hosts e-book and e-audiobook services for libraries, agencies and companies. It has been involved with e-books since its beginnings in 1999, first offering them directly to consumers and then, recognizing their importance to libraries and institutions, shifting their focus in that direction. Later, NetLibrary saw a natural market for e-audiobooks in libraries for their patrons, and began contacting publishers to develop this as well.

PUBLISHERS & TITLES

Concerned, no doubt, about potential copyright protection issues involving a format with which they were unfamiliar, the major audiobook producers were slow to respond to the call. Finally, about a year and a half ago, Recorded Books contracted with NetLibrary to make some of their titles available to libraries in digital downloadable form. As of today approximately 2,000 of their e-audiobooks are available online, in eight different collections, and every month new ones get added. Titles in the K-12 School Library Collection range from classics such as Huckleberry Finn and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea to popular best-sellers such as Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, its 400 titles encompassing a full range of interests and genres. The Children's and Young Adult Collection includes award-winning fiction and nonfiction, classics, and bestselling YA authors--an entertaining, interesting, and relevant selection of e-audios for children and young adults across a variety of cultures. You can browse the list of all Recorded Books's e-audiobook selections, examine collections or search for a specific title at http://netlibrary.com/ Librarian/Products/AudiobookSub scription.aspx.

For quite a while, Recorded Books had the e-audiobook NetLibrary market all to itself, but a major change is in the wind. In January, in two press releases, one hard on the heels of the other, NetLibrary announced that Blackstone Audiobooks and Random House Publishing Group have agreed to offer a large selection of their titles, which can be preordered and will be available to library patrons to download in March.

Blackstone Audiobooks's first group of titles will include 1,600 of their classics, best-sellers, and recent award winners such as The Civil War; Mere Christianity; The Aubrey/Maturin series; Beyond Band of Brothers; Charlie Wilson's War; A Confederacy of Dunces; The Legend of the Wandering King (a CBC/NSTA Outstanding International Book for 2006); The Secret River (the 2006 Commonwealth Writer's Prize winner and a short-listed title for the Man Booker Prize); The Master (an IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and New York Times Notable Book); The Sherlock Holmes Theatre (Blackstone Audiobook's 2005 Audie Award winner for Best Drama); and The Prestige, winner of the World Fantasy Award, to name only a few. You can browse them all by category on http://www.netlibrary.com/ Librarian/Products/Blackstone.aspx.

Random House Group's initial offering is more modest in number--about 600 titles--but they will be featuring such authors as Mitch Albom, Maya Angelou, Jane Austen, Ann Brashares, Libba Bray, Meg Cabot, Kate DiCamillo, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, Sue Grafton, Carl Hiaasen, John Irving, Jonathan Kellerman, Dean Koontz, Lois Lowry, Mary Pope Osborne, Phillip Pullman, Anna Quindlen, Anne Rice, Louis Sachar, Jerry Spinelli, Danielle Steel, Jules Verne, and many more. Look over the entire collection at http://www.net library.com/Librarian/Products/Books OnTape.aspx.

This is only the beginning of what promises to be an e-audiobook boom. A NetLibrary spokesperson has stated that by spring, L.A. Theater Works will be climbing aboard as well, while several other publishers are getting very, very interested.

SO NOW WHAT?

You're a young adult who got a new digital audio player for Christmas that you're dying to fill up. Your English teacher has just assigned Great Expectations, and you know you'll never be able to sit still long enough to finish it. But if you could just get hold of it on audio in digital form, you could load your player and listen to it everywhere you went. How feasible is that scenario? Well, although there are some prerequisites that have to be met, it is no pipe dream.

First of all, your library must have an account with NetLibrary and have purchased the rights to the book in which you are interested. (There will be more about this later, but for the sake of expedience, assume it has.) You will be able to search for, preview, download and listen to e-audiobooks from the NetLibrary platform via the Internet, which you can access at your participating library. Alternatively, you can use a remote computer and go directly to www.netlibrary.org or get there indirectly through a link on your public library's website. In either of the last two cases, you will need a password to log in and begin your quest.

At www.netlibrary.org users need no NetLibrary account to simply click on "enter" where it says "Libraries" and find a button on the upper left of the screen inviting them to watch a comprehensive audio/video demo that will walk them step-by-step through the nuts and bolts of searching, previewing, downloading and transferring e-audiobooks and establishing the NetLibrary account necessary for home use. But for the purpose of this paper, assume you've searched and discovered that your library has Great Expectations, which is, in fact, a Recorded Books e-audiobook, just shy of 16 hours long.

Secondly, you need time. Full-length e-audiobooks are long, and the sound files are large. In this case, if you want to hear Dickens in CD-quality, the file is 223 MB. Radio-quality is 31 MB. It will take anywhere from more than 9 hours on a dial-up modem to 19 minutes on cable to download the CD quality Great Expectations, versus from 1.5 hours to 2 minutes to download the radio quality files. The main difference between the two files, apart from the length of the downloading process, is what you can do with them afterwards. Only CD-quality files can be transferred to a portable player. Radio-quality files must remain on the computer. Either can be played there on Windows Media Player. Neither type can be burned to disk, however, because internal copyright protection data will automatically defeat the copying.

Will you need the CD-quality files? Only if your player can read them. You will have to check the manual that comes with your PDA or MP3 player to see if it will accept Microsoft-secure, protected WMA files. If the brand name of your player is "iPod," you are going to be out of luck. iPods do not yet support the technology needed to transfer your files. A discussion of this issue and a partial list of supported devices can be found at http://www.netlibrary.com/ Librarian/ Products/SupportedeAudio bookDevices.aspx.

Regardless of whether you are listening to your audiobook over your computer or through a portable player, the files are yours to hear over and over again for three weeks, and you can have up to 10 e-audiobooks "out" at the same time. They may be renewed online if you need them past the virtual due date. Otherwise, they will simply cease to play any more. You will not have to take anything back to the library, but you will want to remove the useless files from your machine.

HOW CAN A LIBRARY OBTAIN E-AUDIOBOOKS?

Recorded Books offers libraries and institutions an annual subscription plan, the price of Which is determined by the library type and size in some instances or by the annual number of patrons served in others. This can cost anywhere from $5,000 to S60,000 a year, for which libraries get unlimited simultaneous downloads to an unlimited number of patrons and a guarantee of 30 new titles every month.

Blackstone Audiobooks and Random House Group are making their titles available to libraries on a one-book/one-user basis, exactly like hard and paperback books: if a library only purchases one digital copy but it's "checked out" by a listener, no one else can take it out again until its virtual return. In no instance will the digital book cost more than its tangible counterpart, and most are expected to sell for about 15% less. NetLibrary will also waive access fees on purchase of all Blackstone Audiobooks and Random House Group e-audio titles made before March 31, 2007.

The practical advantages of e-audiobooks for librarians need no elaboration. For more information, to get an explanation of the costs, or to arrange for a demonstration, call a NetLibrary sales rep at 1-800-898-OCLC, or send an email to [e-mail].

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author wishes to thank Bob Murphy of OCLC and Marge Gammon of NetLibrary for their time, explanations, news clippings, press releases, URL links, and temporary password, which were invaluable for the writing of this article.

Francine Levitov has a BA in English, an MS in English Education, a Master's Equivalent in Curriculum Theory and Development, and 12 years of experience teaching secondary school English. She is presently retired from a second career as a criminal defense lawyer and spends her days indulging her audiobook addiction.