The Summer Reading Program decorations will soon come down, and the inevitable change of the fall schedule, back to school, maple leaves piling up in the parking lot, will soon begin. In the brief pause between the two, you might want to look into the newest service offered by the Radford Public Library. As of last year, through a consortium of public libraries in Southwest Virginia, we began offering downloadable audio books. Through the library’s web site, www.radford.va.us/library you can now find a growing list of downloadable format books on tape from Overdrive that can move to your computer, in some cases may be burned to CDs, and in all cases can go onto your MP3 player or other portable device. There’s a bit of learning if you’re over twenty, but we’ve all tried it down here and can help you master it if you’re a beginner.
What’s the advantage of downloadable audio books over the CDs or cassettes long offered by the library? Well, for publicly used media, the huge advantage is they never get broken, scratched, misused by the last person who listened, so we hope to hear fewer complaints from people who got to the final disc only to find it won’t play. Compact discs have proven to be far too fragile for the rough use of public library customers, and while we will continue to buy them while we wait for the new technology to spread through the community, the end of the CD era seems to be in sight. Of course, we are still holding on to VHS videorecordings because people still check them out… It takes a good long while for media to totally roll over as long as people are still using their old equipment.
Are you a Facebook user? Look for the new Radford Public Library group. We’ll be using this site to let people know about upcoming events, maybe post some staff book reviews, library book cart race videos, or whatever else we can come up with to keep you connected to your library.