September 17, 2007

To our Boise Public Library community members who are Mac or iPod users

Thank you for your interest in our downloadable eAudiobooks. We regret that we cannot offer eAudiobooks to Mac and iPod users through our two downloadable eAudiobook collections, NetLibrary and OverDrive. The Library realizes that some of our users are Macintosh users--actually somewhere around 8-15%, depending on who you ask--and an additional percentage of our users have chosen iPods as their portable audio players. While we want to provide service to all our users, at this time there simply IS NOT an eAudiobook vendor who provides service to libraries AND is Macintosh compatible.

If you are looking for audio books for your Macintosh or iPod, your two main options are currently Audible.com and iTunes, both of which are individual for-pay services.  Our other digital resources, such as eBooks from Gale Virtual Reference, TumbleBooks, Learning Express, are 100% Mac compatible, although they clearly do not offer similar content. Only our eAudiobook collections are not compatible at this time.  We will continue to monitor eAudiobook trends and seek solutions for this situation.

Many librarians have spoken with OverDrive and NetLibrary representatives (our two eAudiobook vendors) and Apple representatives at length over this issue, and it is clear that the Mac-incompatibility is the result of the digital rights management (DRM) and proprietary formats on Macintosh computers & devices (like the iPod). The way PCs (Windows/Microsoft) and other computer systems like Linux handle digital rights management just isn’t compatible with the way Macs/iPods (Apple) handle digital rights management.

The best recourse that we as librarians, and you as one of our customers, have is to write letters to Apple, NetLibrary, and OverDrive voicing your dissatisfaction with the situation. You are encouraged to do this using the contact information listed below. The more voices they hear, the more likely they are to change. Thank you for your feedback.

Cordially,
Glenna R. Rhodes, Electronic Resources Librarian
Boise Public Library
208-384-4442
grhodes@cityofboise.org
 

• Apple, Inc, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014-2084 -- (408) 996-1010 -- www.apple.com

• NetLibrary/OCLC, 6565 Kilgour Place, Dublin, Ohio 43017-3395 -- (800) 848-5800 -- support@oclc.org

• OverDrive, Inc., Valley Tech Center - Suite C, 8555 Sweet Valley Drive, Cleveland, OH 44125 USA -- Phone: (216) 573-6886  Fax: (216) 573-6888 --  Email form: www.dlrinc.com/LibraryService-Info.asp

Last Updated: 09/17/2007  grr/AS