Week 9: Thing #22: eBooks, audio books

When I first visited the World eBook Fair site, I saw that there was a handful of free books available, but that a subscription fee was required to join the site and gain access to the entire catalog of digitized books.

I decided instead to make a contribution to Project Gutenberg and see what I could find for free. I should have understood that the books on Project Gutenberg would be those where there is no existing copyright, i.e. older books. In fact, this seems to be true. Among those authors with works on Project Gutenberg are the following: James Russell Lowell, Amy Lowell, John Locke, the Roman historian Livy, and Jack London. The following children's authors were not available at Project Gutenberg: Natalie Babbitt, Kathleen Krull, Lois Lowry, or Shel Silverstein.

I downloaded a version of Jack London's Call of the Wild from a mirror site as a compressed file. The book opened as a txt file. Although I accessed the full text of the book, the appearance of the text was dated looking, reminding me of early Internet files before graphics. I don't think Project Gutenberg is going to replace the regular text versions of books any time soon, but it is a great, convenient research tool.

I tried to download an audio book, The Kabul Beauty School, from my regional library system. I was able to access a brief two-minute introductory reading of the book, a beautiful reading. To get the entire book, I needed to download the Overdrive Media Console, which I did, and also upgrade Windows Media Player, which I could not do on account of security on the school laptop I was using. Also, I could not discover whether and where the file was locate on my laptop. So with the equipment I currently have and the security restrictions on some of it, the use of audio books and e-books would not be that easy. I am sure that if I had more time, and if I got some technical help, I would be able to get the file I downloaded.