Reading and Listening: Text-Synchronized eAudioBooks
The Audiobook Blog posted on an interesting new service available for a few books, on a few devices, from a few places: text-synchronized audiobooks. Basically, you listen to the book as text scrolls by. Think of it as closed-captioning for eAudioBooks. Librivox community folks have been discussing different methods for adding text to audio, Tantor Media has eAudioBooks (on CD or MP3 discs) with the entire book as a PDF too. And a new iPhone app, the iClassix, offers scrolling text synched up with public domain eAudioBooks (that run $0.99 at iTunes). It seems that a lot of different minds are on the same wavelength right now. Check out the Audiobook Blog post for more details and links.
This should be of interest to libraries because we are required to provide accessible resources and services, and legally we're all bound to caption our podcasts and videocasts (if you didn't know that, you probably should talk to your legal department). This kind of service would be a great way of making those eAudioBooks accessible to anybody and everybody. Lots of times a title is only released as an eBook in PDF, or as an eAudioBook. That can frustrate users with sight or hearing disabilities who want an eCopy of that particular title. Keep an eye on this area–I see huge growth potential.
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:04 am
Legal department?
*falls out of chair laughing*
Any bones to throw to your small-library readers on the subject of captioning requirements?
January 26th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
I don’t mean the library’s legal department, but most cities, counties, universities, companies, schools, etc. will have some kind of legal representation – a lawyer on retainer, at the very least, to deal with such issues. If you truly don’t feel you have anyone to turn to for this question, then I would play it safe for certain and offer text equivalents of videocasts and podcasts.