February 11, 2008
Download from Toronto Public Library
Toronto Public Library has been adding e-books, audiobooks, music and videos for its card-holding patrons to download. There are three services: OverDrive, NetLibrary, and Safari Online. Select 'Download Books, Music and Video'.
Users will need a Library card at the Toronto Public Library to browse NetLibrary and Safari, and to download anything from OverDrive.
OverDrive distributes premium digital content and provides the technology for managing access and digital rights. "A single platform for eBooks, audio books, music and video simplifies both the management and end user experience." ( OverDrive About Us )
Users must install the OverDrive Media Console to download and navigate through the audio and video media library. Audio and video require Windows Media Player.
TPL has sections of "always available" video and audiobooks - similar to a permanent collection, and featured items. It might be easiest to use the Browse by Subject to see what is available across all formats in a topic of interest rather than taking a stab at keyword or title searches.
The video selection embraces Classics (Farewell to Arms, Tale of Two Cities), Comedy, Drama, Health and Fitness, Foreign, Horror, and Instructional. Video can be transferred to some portable devices .
The music is mainly classical along with opera and some lighter pieces such as the classics in cinema.
Books must be read through Adobe Reader 8. The eBooks are protected with Adobe DRM (Digital Rights Management). Some books are also available for portable devices as Mobipocket eBooks. Travel, cooking and diet, self-help, fiction - there is a good range of material although it is lacking in depth at this point.
Lending periods vary according to the format. Books and music are for 21 days, video for 7. After it times out you can't access the item.
NetLibrary has 1,800 audiobooks and nearly 7,600 ebooks. Audiobooks may be browsed by subject, but not the ebooks. Best bet is to search on a keyword to see if anything matching an interest turns up. Drawing as a keyword turned up the Inside Out text on Word 2003 - not what I had in mind but potentially useful. These eBooks are only to be viewed online - chapters or sections cannot be downloaded - and print is only possible for individual pages. Fortunately you can save the title to a favourites list and add notes.
Audiobooks can be downloaded in CD quality (larger files) or radio quality (fine for spoken word) to be played through Windows Media Player, Winamp, or Musicmatch Jukebox on a PC or on one of the supported PDAs. Unfortunately, files cannot be played on iPods or Microsoft's Zune devices. We have to stick with this list of tested players. This seems to be a grave limitation, considering the popularity of the iPod.
Safari Online is the third section. It has over 300 full-text computing, I.T. and other technology books from O'Reilly Media (via ProQuest). This is not the most welcoming of interfaces. A popup window will display categories for browsing - certainly the easiest way to navigate this. The Advanced Search offers search by title, category, date, publisher. Items tend to be older - there were only 27 titles published in 2007. Reading must be done online - no downloads.
Anyone who needs the current books and topics will want to stayed in touch with the main Safari site at www.safari.com where books can be read in part or full for free and printed or shipped for a price.
All in all, this is a great move forward to providing e-content to the user community in Toronto and area. Nearly anyone is likely to find something of interest among the titles for books, audiobooks, videos, and maybe classical music. However, we can't be too set on what we want to find - better to let serendipity kick in by browsing. The various limitations on viewing and on use of portable viewing devices will dampen enthusiasm and use of these services. But those with the devices will surely benefit, and those who just need to find very specific information from a text, will save some money using NetLibrary or Safari.
Posted by Gwen at February 11, 2008 08:17 PM