Thing #22: Audiobooks

I am already somewhat familiar with the Greater Phoenix Digital Library. I have spent time reading their extensive tutorial for users. I have already checked out items myself and burned a few to CD. I have mixed feelings about it. I think it is potentially a great resource, but it is quite complex to use. I find it very difficult to help customers over the phone to figure out why a book didn't download completely, for example, or why they can't install the correct software. All sorts of things can and do go wrong during the process, and I find that I'm pretty hopeless in helping them over the phone--because they often cannot explain what they did and what is wrong.

I do not own an MP3 player, and I think downloading something to one's home computer to read or listen to is cumbersome and awkward. I would not want to sit here for hours to read or listen to a book! I love the fact that some books can be burned to CD. As I said above, I have done that, but the results were disappointing. I have a long commute, and I would love to listen to audiobooks while driving. I was very excited to burn my first CD audiobooks, but when I put them into my player, I discovered that their were NO tracks. In other words, I could not stop the CD and pick up where I left off the next time. I would have to begin the CD from the beginning each time, or else listen to the whole CD at one sitting! I think maybe these particular books were originally in an audiotape format, and therefore there were no divisions. So I discovered that burning to CD was going to be worthless for my purposes. I guess someone who had unlimited time could potentially sit and listen to one whole CD at one sitting, but I can't do that!

I will continue to explore and try to learn about this resource so that I can better help customers with it. There are plenty of wonderful offerings. One other thing I find kind of annoying about it, though, is that for many items, only one or two copies are available, and once they are checked out, you are out of luck for a full 21 days, even though the person probably downloaded or burned it immediately.