Library Offers New, Free Service!

COUNTY LIBRARY PATRONS CAN NOW DOWNLOAD AUDIO BOOKS

By Denise Nelsen, County's Aging & Independence Services

Customers of the San Diego County Library system will now be able to borrow audio books online.

The downloadable books will be available without charge on the San Diego County Library homepage, http://www.sdcl.org.

After entering the ID number from their library card, customers can download onto a computer or a portable player device and any of 520 popular titles that have been recorded by professional narrators.

Under this new method for borrowing books, customers will have access to any of the titles any time they want them. What's more, more than one customer can listen to the same title at the same time.

Customers can check out a book for a 3-week loan period, with a 3-week renewal, just as they can with regular books. The books can be played on computers and on many styles of portable media players. At the end of the loan period, the audio books are automatically erased.

This is a product for home use only. Customers will not be able to download and play these books on the branch library computers.

Plans calls for the addition of language learning titles and about 15 new popular book titles each month.

"Anyone who has visited a public library in recent years knows that libraries are no longer just for books," said County Library Director Jose Aponté. "Savvy families flock to the library to borrow educational and entertainment videotapes and DVD's, as well as CD's and audiotapes that can cultivate a young person's love of literature, or enhance a vacation, a walk on the beach, or commute time to and from work."

Aponté said the San Diego County Library continually invests in convenient technologies, taking pride in providing library customers popular works of literature in the various media to which the public tastes are migrating.

Along with the new mode of audiotape delivery, the library will continue to enrich the community with popular titles available in traditional audiotape, CD, and book formats.

For more information, contact the library at (858) 694-2415.