Netlibrary

Well, I have had some experience downloading audiobooks from My Media Mall, and I didn't really know much about Netlibrary, so I figured that would be the one to try. There are currently 345 Children's fiction books, which is nice. I'll have to see what My Media Mall has. As soon as I chose a book though, it asked for my account. Ummm, didn't I already give you my library card number? Oh, I see, I need to make *another* account. LOL. I don't have enough accounts on the Internet, so let me make another one. :) To be fair, perhaps I had to do this for My Media Mall, but I don't remember. Ok, goofy thing number 2. I downloaded the software for both Overdrive and Netlibrary yesterday, in preparation for actually choosing a book to download today. And now that I've chosen a book, it looks like it is asking me to download again. I don't get it.

Ok, for all of my complaining, I seem to have found a gem. It appears that all of the books on Netlibrary are available all of the time? Could that be? At least that is how it has appeared thus far. The jury is still out on the ease of downloading. I'm in the middle of that now. Ok, so the downloading process worked fine for a short book, but now I'm downloading Heidi, and that seems to be taking quite a while. It is very clear cut about how to download to your computer or a portable device, like my iPod. Interestingly, I'm now downloading a second book while working on my netbook, and I don't have iTunes on it, yet it still seems to be downloading the audiobook, directly to my iPod.


So, in comparing NetLibrary to My Media Mall, it seems like Netlibrary only has audiobooks, while MyMediaMall has ebooks too. It seems like the two of them together make a good pair. I do think I am much more comfortable using NetLibrary now, and could probably help a patron muddle through it. I think it is a matter of just continually downloading books to keep the skill up. Like anything, if we don't get questions about how to download the audiobooks for three months or so, it is almost like we have to relearn it every time. I think it would be helpful to have two bookmarks at the download stations in the library, one for NetLibrary and one for MyMedia Mall. On the bookmark there should be really easy directions for how to do it. I know that there is a sheet of instructions, but from what I remember it is pretty long and personally I zone out when there are too many directions for me to read. And yet I write long rambling blog posts? heehee, but those aren't directions, that is the difference. :)

So, I'm off to download an ebook to my computer for transfer to my Pandigital Novel ereader. I haven't downloaded that many books to it yet so I'm still rather new to the process, but I'm going to give it another go so I can bring an ebook with me on vacation! :)