Vendor Vehicle Showcases Library's Digital Offerings
By Raya Kuzyk -- Publishers Weekly, 8/11/2008 8:32:00 AM
The Digital Bookmobile (www.digitalbookmobile.com), a 74-foot-long, 18-wheel community outreach vehicle promoting awareness of libraries' digital media collections, kicked off its national tour yesterday in New York City's Central Park.Stocked with broadband Internet-connected PCs, high-definition monitors, and various portable media players, the vehicle is owned and operated by OverDrive, a Cleveland-based tech company that distributes some 100,000 downloadable e-book, audiobook, music, and video titles to a network of more than 7,500 libraries, schools, and retailers. (Most recently, OverDrive announced it would be providing download services for Borders Books).
The New York Public Library hosted the inaugural event, at which special guest Frank Delaney signed all 300 copies of his book Tipperary. (Through the NYPL's "virtual branch," ebook.nypl.org, his books Ireland and Simple Courage: A True Story of Peril on the Sea are for free to anyone with an NYPL library card, as ebook and audiobook downloads).
Between the hours of 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., approximately 300 visitors stopped by the bookmobile, which had hands-on learning stations demonstrating a search of the NYPL's digital media catalog and demonstrations of how to download for free its ebooks, audiobooks, music, and video titles onto various mobile devices—including, in the case of the 3000 MP3 audiobook titles OverDrive introduced to its catalog of 20,000 WMA files in June, the iPod.
Inside the bookmobile was a beta version of OverDrive Media Console for the Mac (all of OverDrive's distributed digital titles currently play in a proprietary media player called OverDrive Media Console), whose official launch date, said OverDrive Marketing Director David Burleigh, has not yet been set.
The Digital Bookmobile will travel from coast to coast through 2009, to cities including Boston, Cleveland, and Washington, DC. For a regularly updated list of confirmed stops, visit: www.digitalbookmobile.com/Calendar.asp#emailupdate.
Related Content
Related Content
PW PARTNERS
