OverDrive announced today that Penguin audio and eBook are now downloadable from their system. Libraries can add the titles to their collections by going to OverDrive’s collection development portal at www.contentreserve.com.
Penguin imprints include:
All week on my local NPR station, I’ve been hearing ads for NYPL’s event in Central Park this Sunday, “The Digital Bookmobile“
This is the first event in Overdrive’s “Digital Bookmobile’s National Tour” (hey, I hope there’s t-shirts!)
What a brilliant idea; by helping the library promote the service, OverDrive insures that library customers use it (they even sprang for the NPR ads).
The Digital Bookmobile is an 18-wheeler (the increased cost of gas must be causing agida). After New York, the Bookmobile will travel to Boston, Long Island, Washington D.C., and places in between (I plan to be there when it come to Brooklyn P.L. on Tuesday).
This follows on the heels of the successful Digipalooza event that OverDrive held in Cleveland last month, the second “international user group conference of OverDrive partner libraries.” From reports of bloggers, it was an inspiring event (e.g., Thoughts of a Well-Rounded Librarian and Top Librarian). OverDrive plans to do a third Digipalooza, but haven’t selected a date yet.
Can libraries look forward to offering downloadable audiobooks for iPods now that Random House will no longer encrypt their audios with digital rights management software? In a word, no.
In the Wall Street Journal on Monday [full article available only to WSJ subscribers], RH Audio publisher Madeline McIntosh explained why they’ve decided to abandon DRM, “If we insist on using DRM, our audiobooks can’t be sold to consumers who have iPods, unless they buy them from Audible or iTunes.”
The Journal article did not address the situation for libraries, but in a letter (posted on Corey Doctorow’s site, craphound.com) sent to agents on Thursday, RH Audio publisher McIntosh emphatically states (bold-faced items are in the original) that nothing will change in that area:
We are not making any changes at all to our library digital download program. That marketplace operates under very different conditions than retail. In the library environment, DRM is used not just to prevent copying, but also to control the limited borrowing privileges attached to the digital library edition. To be clear: all titles distributed in download form from our Books on Tape and Listening Library lists through our two existing library distribution partners, OverDrive and NetLibrary, will continue to have DRM.
Our friends over at Shelf Awareness report (under “Childrens Book News”) that Tim Ditlow, who just recently left Listening Library (founded by his father and purchased by Random House in 1999), is now joining Brilliance Audio (another family company, recently bought by Amazon}.
