Week 9 Audiobooks and the Digital Collection

As part of this exercise I played with the audiobooks section of the PBCLS website. I knew that we had audiobooks available online, but had never really spent time becoming familiar with what we have to offer. Audiobooks is a good tool to have because we have a lot of patrons who only listen to audiobooks, and if we don't have something they may be able to obtain it through audiobooks. They can even burn copies of certain books for their personal us to listen to while driving, don't have computer access, etc. Another reason why audiobooks is helpful is that it has a section of "always available" books which include many classics. I don't know about other branches, but in BG we have a lot of students looking for the same books on their reading lists and we don't owe many copies. I like being able to suggest audiobooks to patrons who may not want to buy the book or wait for a hold to come in. It's instant gratification....fast and convenient.

While I was playing with Audiobooks I checked out the book, "Bonk", just to see what the process would be like. The book, "Bonk" is currently not available for checkout in our system in audiobook format, so audiobooks is the only way that we offer it. If a patron wanted the paper form there is a waiting list they would have to be on, and there is no way to tell how long it would take. With audiobooks, there was one copy of "Bonk" available, and I was able to check it out instantly. Now I have access to "Bonk" for 14 days, but the beauty of it is that if it looks like I won't be able to finish I then I can burn a copy of the book.

The way the information on the book is displayed is that it tells you how many copies of the book are available for checkout. Just like with a library there are limited number of copies on certain things (except for the always available books). And when you check out a book it reflects the checkout immediately on the information. When I checked out "Bonk" it went from having 1 to 0 copies available. Patrons can then be on a waiting list for the audiobook. For those of you who may be wondering how audiobook sets up their information, I copied the information from "Bonk" for you to see:

Bonk

The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Edition: Unabridged

by
Mary Roach
Sandra Burr
Publisher:
Brilliance Audio

Subject(s):
NonfictionScience

Excerpt(s):

Title, Author, Dedication (WMA format)
(burn to CD allowed)
Format Information
OverDrive Audio Book
add to Digital Cart
Available copies:
1
Library copies:
1
Lending period:
14 days
File size:
136349 KB