We're all busy, right? That's what this blog is all about - finding web and mobile solutions that make life easier for busy librarians. And, to repeat a stereotype, we love to read. But how does a busy librarian find time to read?
For me, the solution is listening to audio books in my car, while I do yard work, etc. I have been downloading audio books from my local public library to my mp3 player and/or iTouch for years and loving every minute of it ("The Help" was amazing!). However, the available books tend to be current popular fiction, which is great at times, but sometimes I'd like to lose myself in a "classic".
Imagine my delight when I discovered websites and apps that provide free audio downloads of books in the public domain. Austen, the Brontes, Conan Doyle, Dickens, Twain, Plato, Shakespeare, etc, etc, etc, all at the click of a mouse button. There are many services out there. Today, I'm going to mention three of then and hope that our readers will add their suggestions to the comments.
As of this writing, Librivox.org has over 4200 completed audio books recorded from the Project Gutenberg catalog. There are multiple readings of some books. For example, there are 6 versions of "A Christmas Carol", including a dramatic reading and a Dutch version. Available download formats include mp3, ogg, and m4b and you can download individual chapters or the entire book. One caveat I must include about the Librivox audio books is that the reading is done by volunteers. Some are stellar and some are less than stellar. Also, since the volunteers record one chapter at a time, you could get a download with multiple readers. So far, my experience with their files has been pretty good.
Lit2Go is an audiobook (mp3) project from the Florida's Educational Technology Clearinghouse (College of Education, University of South Florida) that provides access to works in the public domain. All of their audiobook files can be downloaded from their website and some can be accessed through iTunesU. PDF versions of the text are also available for download and, in many cases, support materials for teachers are provided. Since this is an educational service, you can search the database by reading level as well as title, author, keywords, or subject matter. There are classics in the Lit2Go catalog, but the collection tends to focus on African-American lit (poems of P.L. Dunbar, "Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man", "Up from Slavery"), YA and children's lit ("Anne of Green Gables", the Oz series, "Treasure Island"), education ("History of Modern Mathematics", presidential speeches, "Twenty Talks to Teachers"), and Florida ("In the Wild of Florida", "Ocala to Tampa by Train", "Billy Bowlegs and the Seminole War").
Finally, for iTouch or iPhone users, there is Free Audiobooks by Spreadsong, Inc. This app provides the listener with a library of "4,728 classic audiobooks for less than a cup of coffee" ($1.99 one-time charge for the app). Their Apple app store page doesn't say where they get the audiobooks from, only that the collections are "handpicked". However, their collection looks amazingly like the Librivox collection. So why not just download Librivox audiobooks. Well, their player does have a couple of nice features. First, you can set it to only download sections/chapters when you're ready to listen to them where most audiobook players download the whole book at once. Second, it has a sleep timer so, if you're listening at bedtime or in a hammock, the entire book doesn't play while you're snoozing. I've tried it… it works.
Final thought - being busy doesn't mean you have to give up reading. I was an audiobook skeptic, now I'm a fan.
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