The library has acquired a new e-audiobook resource we are excited about. If you don’t know, e-audiobooks are recorded books that you can listen to on your phone or other electronic device. Audiobooks on CD or tape have been around for years and years but this new digital version is important for reasons I will explain.
Audiobooks are very popular at the library and one major reason is that people like them for long drives. They really are great for that. Like many Albertans I routinely spend hours and hours behind the wheel and having something to listen to makes these trips much easier. Unfortunately, newer cars often don’t have CD players and so the older versions of audiobooks don’t work for everyone. People need digital versions that can play via their connected phones.
We’ve had a product called Hoopla that met this need for a while. Hoopla is a great resource that has lots of e-audiobooks and other material like movies as well. It has great content, it is easy to use and it has been very popular in Alberta libraries. There’s just one problem with Hoopla — it is expensive. Hoopla charges libraries for each download, which means the more popular it is the more it costs. This turns the value equation for libraries on its head — normally high use makes our sharing model more efficient but not in this case.
Hoopla was largely paid for by the provincial government as part of its public library support, but the province will not fund it after 2018 (largely for the cost reasons mentioned above). We can’t afford to keep it on our own and we will lose access at the end of the year. This loss was going to be a real problem. Fortunately Shortgrass Library System, the regional system of which Medicine Hat is a member, came to the rescue and acquired about 27,000 e-audiobooks through RB Digital for the next two years. So if you have a long drive in your future, the library has you covered.
The new e-audiobooks mostly allow simultaneous use. This means that many people can use them at the same time. With electronic content in libraries, quite often the publishers put licensing restrictions in place that only allow one person at a time to have access. This meets the publisher’s legitimate need to put some limit on how much the title can be used, but it seems ridiculous to users. How can there be only one “copy” of an electronic file? For the most part, you will not have to wait to access these new e-audiobooks. The rationing and use caps that were placed on Hoopla to control costs will also be a thing of the past.
Ken Feser is chief librarian at the Medicine Hat Public Library.
