To Read or To Listen? Downloading Audiobooks and Ebooks

I’m already familiar with how to access and read an eBook through netLibrary, so I decided to challenge myself by downloading an eAudio file from OverDrive. Since I did not want to download software to our staff computer, I went through the process on my home computer.

I’d already spent too much time this week searching for an interesting title across range of all the electronic material types, so I decided to simplify my search this time. I found an eAudio novel by searching for “Canada” as a subject. Next, I clicked on the link that took me from the catalog search results to the Carnegie Library Digital Media Center page where I saw that I could download and check out the materials. I didn’t realize that it would take about four clicks and three different browser windows to both download the Overdrive software as well as download the actual book onto the computer. The “download” buttons on each of the windows were always difficult for me to spot on the page; it took me a minute to find them as opposed to my usual quick scan of the page. Most of the rest of the process went smoothly. I ran into trouble as I tried to download the audio file of The Tsarina’s Daughter: A Novel”. My computer is from 2001 which affected the downloading process. After more than half an hour of watching the computer download the audio book, I gave up and canceled the job.

Next, I decided to try and download an audio book through netLibrary in hopes that I would have more success. Instead of using either the catalog or the netLibrary search box to find a title, I went to the netLibrary page and clicked on the “Audio books” link. Then under the category Browse Audio books by Subject” I clicked on the subject “Arts & Entertainment” because it only displayed two results. In this case, I felt relieved to see so few choices. I just wanted to go through the process from beginning to end without any setbacks! I thought that I signed up for a netLibrary account over a year ago, but I was wrong. Luckily, that sign up process was not difficult. I was also glad to see that the audio book download only took about six minutes- yay. Even though I had very little interest in the book that I downloaded- the unabridged “Treasury of Royal Scandals” by Michael Farquhar- I listened to about ten minutes of the book and it started to pique my interest. I closed out of Windows Media Player and then tried to pick up where I left off about 20 minutes later. It took me a few minutes to find the book under the “Now Playing” tab. In case you couldn’t tell, I don’t download media files to my computer. I’m only familiar with downloading documents.

Overall, I like that I get to experiment with all of the new tools from this endeavor, but at the same time, I am still frustrated that it takes multiple tries and longer than an hour to complete the task.