WILBOR Downloadable Audiobooks Consortium; Upcoming Events

News March 7, 2008 (mp3 file: 2.52 MB, 2:41 min.)
WILBOR Downloadable Audiobooks Consortium; Upcoming Events

Southwest and Southeast LSAs are joining Central and Northwest LSAs in the new WILBOR consortium, which will make downloadable audiobooks available to the patrons of participating libraries. Patrons can download books—fiction, nonfiction, children’s and teen—from their home or office PC, and listen to them on the computer or transfer them to an mp3 player. Some titles can even be burned to a CD. It’s easy, it doesn’t cost the patron anything and it doesn’t even cost the library very much to participate. For roughly the cost of one audiobook per month your patrons can have access to this collection of audiobooks, so the library is offering another 24/7 service.

The deadline for signing up for WILBOR is approaching. If you have questions you can check the SWILSA website for links to FAQs about the consortium and for the letters of agreement. And, of course, you can also contact me if you have questions. Please join us in offering this fantastic service to your patrons.

Some reminders to mark your calendar for upcoming events:

The Iowa Library Association’s Legislative Day is Tuesday, March 11. Check the Association’s website for more information.

The topic of this month’s Computerside Chat is Meebo, an instant messaging interface that lets you manage all your IM accounts in one, web-based interface; it also lets you put a chat box on your webpage so patrons can “chat” their questions to you. The Computerside Chat is on March 17, and you can register in the statewide CE catalog.

On April 18 Jerri Heid from the Ames Public Library will be doing a workshop for us on Lapsit Programs, and you won’t want to miss that! Register in the CE catalog.

April 16, Wednesday of National Library Week, will be our ‘Day in the Life of SW Iowa Libraries,” when librarians will take photos of their library and its activities, its, well, life, and upload them to the project’s group on Flickr. We’re planning information sessions in SWILSA's Wimba classroom on April 2 and 8, so stay tuned for more information about that.

Children’s Book Discussion will be the first Friday in May. It’s not in the catalog yet, but mark your calendars—it will be in Corning.