OverDrive’s Digital Bookmobile Kicks Off National Outreach Tour in NYC
Raya Kuzyk -- Library Journal, 8/11/2008
- Digital media distributor’s “Digital Bookmobile” makes Central Park debut
- Nationwide tour planned to promote customer awareness of libraries’ offerings
- Still pending from OverDrive: Media Console for the Mac
Yesterday, inside New York City's Central Park, a crowd gathered outside an 18-wheel tractor-trailer tricked out with broadband Internet-connected PCs, high-definition flat-screen monitors, and all manner of MP3 devices. Owned and operated by digital media distributor OverDrive, the Digital Bookmobile is part of a traveling outreach exhibit aimed to raise awareness of public libraries’ download services.
The inaugural event was hosted by the New York Public Library (NYPL), which, through OverDrive and Recorded Books, has for the last few years been providing its patrons with a virtual branch of digital audiobooks, ebooks, music, and videos. Today the bookmobile travels to Cunningham Park, Queens, where it will showcase the Queens Library’s offerings; tomorrow, in Prospect Park, it will be the Brooklyn Public Library’s turn. A nationwide tour is planned through 2009.
NYPL assistant director for children’s programs Margaret Tice, who attended the Central Park event along with about a dozen of her colleagues, told the crowd that the library had circulated 188,000 downloadable items (ebooks, audiobooks, music, and video) last year. In July of this year alone, the library circulated a record-breaking 18,000 items.
New adopters
About 300 people stopped by the bookmobile throughout the day to explore the NYPL’s digital download catalog and sample available titles; by 1:30 p.m., 50 visitors had signed up for library cards. Tice (right, with author Frank Delaney) told LJ many of the visitors either didn’t know such free material was available from the library or were interested in learning how to download the content onto their own mobile devices.
Some visitors were already in the park and stopped by out of curiosity; others came because they’d read about the event in the New York Times or other publications, or on the NYPL’s web site. Still others were drawn by the live percussion music or the day's outside programming: a guest appearance by New York Times best-selling author Delaney (Tipperary), a drawing for a free MP3 player, and craftmaking and storytelling sessions. (See LJ video of Delaney telling how he’s gotten some of his best ideas from libraries.)
What about the Mac?
NYPL assistant director of YA programs Jack Martin told LJ that, though he was happy with the event, he's still waiting for a vital additional component: the release of OverDrive's Media Console for the Mac (all of OverDrive’s distributed digital titles play in a proprietary media player called OverDrive Media Console), which would bring support for OverDrive’s MP3 audiobooks to Mac users and to owners of Mac-formatted Apple devices.
No date has yet been set for the Mac-friendly Media Console’s launch, OverDrive director of marketing David Burleigh told LJ, but several visitors had already taken the bookmobile’s beta version for a trial run.
