When my kids were growing up, we were regular visitors to the library- we always had lots of print books and books on cassettes (later that changed to cds and more recently to a little electronic device) that we checked out. Most days the kids would sit around the cassette player (later cd player) at some point, listening to stories. Long car rides were marked by audio books – when I reminisce about certain trips, in my mind I can hear the story that was playing when we were driving to that place!
A couple of weeks ago I was thinking about how much I missed audio books. These stories and the togetherness they engendered as we all listened together was so much part of the fabric of our lives. I bought an ereader months ago in order to access library books from the US – you can do this if you have a US library card, which of course I do! At that time I noticed that audiobooks were also available to be checked out but it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I sat down to figure out how to access them.
Actually, it’s pretty simple. You visit your library website, and there’s a program available there to download onto your home computer – my library system uses Overdrive Media Console, maybe it’s different for other libraries. Once you do that, all you do is checkout the audio book online and press the button that says ‘download’, then approve the download. At our library system, you can only have six items out at a time on an online account, and books have a fourteen day loan period. This didn’t originally sound too limiting to me, but then I found out that the audio books that are in the format that we check out can’t be returned – they expire after two weeks. It’s a good thing that we have more than one library card!
The limitation of this policy is that is that when we finish an audio book in a day, it has to remain in our account until the due date and we can’t check out anything else. But far be it from me to complain when I’m so delighted that we can once again listen to audiobooks! The audiobooks in our account right now are: The Secret Garden, The Magic Tree House (collection of eight books in the series), Charlotte’s Web, A Bear Called Paddington, The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter, Winnie the Pooh and a collection of Dr. Seuss stories. We have some books on the Kindle as well, for dd12 and me.
There isn’t nearly the selection of ebooks available that you can get in person, but it’s a really nice option to have nonetheless. When we lived in Israel years ago, I used to say that there were only two things I missed about the US: our parents and public libraries. While there are still aspects of public libraries in the US that I miss, this goes a long way toward mitigating my feeling of lack regarding public libraries!
Avivah
Hi Aviva. I have been enjoying your site for well over a year now. I have a 14 yr old son that uses my mother’s library card for audio books.(i am american living in South Africa) We have limited them recently cuz we see he really “checks out” socially/emotionally from the world for long periods of time and it was worrisome. He is currently doing the GED on his own. (did any of your kids do this?) any tips on keeping him motivated? He is in yeshiva ketana from 8-6 …i wouldn’t mind giving him back on a limited capacity some audio books. always looking for more kosher titles…any suggestions greatly appreciated. have a great week! naomi
Hi, Naomi!
Your comment is so interesting because I feel that although the kids get absorbed, it’s very different from the addictive quality of screen time. They are social and pleasant as soon as the audio is turned off, whereas with screen time they need time to readjust to being with themselves and others.
I don’t have enough information to give suggestions on motivation in this case, though as I recently told someone else whose situation reminds me of yours, you can’t force motivation – it’s an internal process and a person needs time and space for that to be able to spring forth from him. A day from 8 – 6 is pretty demanding and I can understand a person wanting to disengage from all of that, even if his way of doing it seems excessive.
Generally, people tend to be motivated about things that matter to them. Is it possible that your son doesn’t care much about the GED and is doing it because someone else told him he needs to?
have you ever tried to check out books from the English library is tsfat?
We were there twice but it’s not realistic for us on a regular basis, being the distance we are from there and not having a car – very expensive and unwieldy to go by bus!
You might want to look at the site http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/. The classics (no longer under copyright) can be downloaded freely as audio books from there. I have seen The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter and The Secret Garden there. My daughter is currently listening to Ann of Green Gables.
I actually have this site bookmarked, along with Project Guttenberg. I just need to take a little bit of time to see how to download books from there. Thanks for the reminder!
On a side note-I recently read Ann of Green Gables for the first time and absolutely loved it! it is funny how when confronted with limited English titles I am picking up and reading books I would never normally go to. I have discovered books and authors out of desperation. Better late than never.
Many Kindle books on Amazon are free. To do a search, look for 0.00 or free. Most are dreck, but many of the same Project Gutenberg books are there too. Great classics for all ages!!
ereaderiq.com helps you find free books, and you can see what was recently added so you don’t have to sift through the results again
I have not taken out audio books from overdrive but for ebooks, I got bumped up to 3 weeks instead of what used to be 2 and I can return them earlier (at least via kindle)
How do you keep your US library card??? Ours makes us renew in person every year. I posted about this recently, actually… http://aliyahland.blogspot.ca/2013/01/online-libraries.html