Too cool!

Here's a great new product that I hope takes off. Someone fresh back from ALA introduced me to it just today. It's (as the company describes it) a self-playing digital audio book. It almost looks like a book. It almost feels like a book. It's an audio book - self contained in its own player. It's a little pricey, but I'll bet it more than makes up for the cost in ease of use for patrons and ease of support for libraries. The company says the price is that of a hard-cover book. The libraries can put it on the shelf, patrons can check it out and be on their way, happily listening.

http://www.playawaydigital.com

Libraries are responding to patron service requests by implementing downloadable audio book service. I fear that this is another service demand to overwhelm library staffs. Libraries claim that they will provide the service but patrons are on their own with their digital audio players, I foresee that reality is that the patrons will expect some level of service. As easy as it is supposed to be to download and load audio books onto an MP3 player, it will be daunting to the technology challenged.

Even buying an MP3 player is humbling. I'm looking to buy one, and have spent a fair amount of time on Cnet, Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, even Sams Club, and talking to everyone I can find who might have one or know something. No, I don't want an iPOD (will write about my reasons some other night). I now know all about playsforsure, flash players, hard drive players, players that interface with Outlook (yeah, I may be able to not carry both an MP3 and a PDA). But I still am pondering exactly what to buy. How many gigs, what kind of battery, does it bookmark?

I've mastered downloading an Overdrive Book. My first download took all-told about an hour after updating Media Player, reading FAQs, and installing the Overdrive player. This is of course, according to company rhetoric very simple. I'm a little smarter than the average bear when it comes to such things (heck, I have a blog!), so I suspect that Yogi or Booboo may have a little more trouble and of course will call their local public library from whom they intend to download their audio book.

Then there's the whole, yes/no you can burn to CD, no your iPOD won't hold it (under normal circumstances), maybe even what about a cassette player?

Anyway, so far I listen to my books on my PC (yes, even a media savvy librarian listens on a PC) while I'm riding my bike going nowhere in my family room. My logical next step is to get this book onto an MP3 device.

I expect that this Playaway Digital thing could be a godsend to libraries who want to circulate what looks to be the easiest possible digital device. So far, they have very few titles. It will be interesting to see how this new technology develops and competes in the market.