Whew-its been a while but I'm back! Feeling refreshed after a long weekend and ready to finally type up my next blog post :) This time we tackle the arguable "meat and potatoes" of librarianship-books!
When I got my first iPhone about five years ago one of the first apps I downloaded was Free Books (available for Apple and Android). However, I didn't use it much. It provides access to thousands of eBooks, mainly public domain titles, but I quickly found that I just don't like reading eBooks on my iPhone screen-its just too little! So, after a few attempts, I eventually just deleted the app. In the future, if I get an iPad, I would almost certainly download it again, as it was an easy to use app and who doesn't love free books!
On a related note, for this Thing I also downloaded Audiobooks (Apple and Android). Audiobooks is pretty much the audio version of Free Books-Thousands of (mostly) public domain books in audio version! The app itself is great-books are listed by title, author, genre, popularity, even narrator (which I really like-I'm kind of picky about my narrators and when I find a good narrator I want to listen to everything they've done! This saves me a lot of steps of looking them up online, finding the titles they've recorded, then searching through the app for those titles). The app remembers where you are in a book and automatically resumes when you close and re-open the app. The main downfall is that (at least for the free version) you cannot download audiobooks-you can only stream them! This stinks for a few reasons. I have about a 30 mile commute to work-PERFECT for audiobooks, but not if I've got to stream them (I have very little data on my phone plan, since I typically have wifi access, and those overages are STEEP!). So unless I'm at home, its not very practical. Also, even if I am at home, I get nervous. I was out doing yard work and listening to some Dickens and kept checking my phone to make sure I was still in wifi range! But, I'll definitely keep the app as it did seem to have (based on the handful of titles I tried) good quality recordings, and sometimes I just feel like being read to rather than reading!
I'm not sure I'd really recommend either of these apps to patrons, due to their limitations. (Also, I still get a lot of patrons that don't have at home wireless internet, so streaming is more or less out). I suppose if they were tech savvy and particularly interested in something other than our own eBook/eAudiobook collections, I might mention these apps. I would certainly promote our collections before promoting either of the apps I used here, but they might be a good second option for someone looking for more.
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