Last week I profiled my favorite audiobook source Audible.com. This week it is a free source for audiobooks, at least for some people. NetLibrary is not something you can subscribe to, it is something your local library subscribes to. So right off the bat a signficant group of people will not be able to use it. I live in Cobb County, Georgia and our library system subscribes.
I have played with it several times, but it wasn’t until recently that it was really usable in any of my regular use cases.
The big problems with online library systems is the Digital Rights Management system. Netlibrary has both ebooks and audiobooks available. But the ebooks are in a format that is not compatible with kindles, so I have never use their ebooks. The audiobooks used to be only windows media format. Which theoretically is ok, I have a windows computer. I even have a zune which can handle the WMA DRM system. But I could never make it work off of my computer.
Recently I went back and looked (to see if I could make it work for audiobooks for my Mom) I saw that there are now MP3 format audiobooks. These MP3 format audiobooks are large single file MP3 files, which do not have an expiration date built into them.
In otherwords, they are perfect for putting on a kindle.
Honestly there are not a ton of books that I want. I looked through about 400 books, and they are not formated well for browsing, and found about 8 or 9 books that I thought I would really listen to. But that is 8 or 9 books that I do not have to pay for that look like good choices. There are a good number of Christian fiction and classic fiction audiobooks. So if you are looking in either of those two genres then you are in luck.
If you do not use these on a kindle you need a player that will hold your position. Otherwise you are going to have to note where you are at every time you stop listening. That could get old fast. This is not a perfect solution, but it is worth checking out if your library subscribes.
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