Audio books

I have an American friend who can reserve books in Mp3 format, enjoy them and then have them do a mission impossible on her as they disappear - minus the smoke - without any intervention on the due date.

Wonderful idea and she's very happy with her Library for providing this service.

I suspect that Audio books are a similarly delightful service but I am not going to find out today. The slow nature of the download means that by the time The rime of the ancient mariner finishes loading from http://www.gutenberg.org I will need to be on my way to the second shift.

(Although I've changed pcs and at least it is downloading and lookit, on this machine I can insert links that do so.)

Also, a thought for those offering and promoting this service: as a rural dweller, unless I spring the many hundreds of dollars required to install a dish, broadband is unavailable to me. My internet comes down tired copper wiring harking back to when Telstra was a service provided by the Government, it doesn't matter that our Computers are lovely and newish and capable of delivering broadband, it just isn't do-able. And we are not alone in this. Those of us in the information industry tend to make a whole pile of assumptions about the availability of broadband and the modernity of the equipment attached to it by our Patrons, we also assume they have the understanding that a virus checker checked for updates at every log on is an essential part of maintaining ones online health and yet it was only recently a woman who gave every indication of being on the upper curve of the intelligence bellcurve was quite insistent to me that she did not need a subscription to Norton, McAfee or their ilk 'because I only go online to do my banking'.

::headslap::

::eyeroll::

::thunking of head on keyboard::