Saturday, April 11, 2009

Week 9: Thing #22 eBooks & Audio eBooks

After having Tumblebooks as part of our school's online library resources, I was excited about exploring more eBook and Audio eBook options. Unfortunately, World EBook Fair requires a fee to access and search their database. Granted the annual fee is only $8.95, but I couldn't find a way to sample one of the books to see if it was worth subscribing to. I was able to search the Gutenberg Project's database, but had difficulty finding a link to browse their subjects. I tried an advanced search using the term "children" for subject, "English" for language and "Audio book, Human-read" for category and got 26 results. I decided to listen to an audio reading of the Velveteen Rabbit and learned that the recording came from LibriVox. The voice was not to my liking, but realize that narrations are done by volunteers and won't always insure consistent high quality. When I broadened my search to "any" for category, I found 329 books, which had many fairytales and folktales listed.

When also searched the Best Places to Get Free Books link, some of the listings were a bit misleading. Audible.com is not a free service; instead it only gives you a 14-day free trial.

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like you had the same experiences I did. I still love Tumblebooks for our kids. One more #thing to go for you. I am just going to finish my implementation plan and send it off. It has been a long but rewarding journey. Way to go!

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  2. Part of the issue I think is that many of the free books are free because the copyright has expired. This means you aren't going to get contemporary books.

    Ann

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  3. I too love Tumblebooks. We get spoiled by quality. I am sorry we are having problems figuring out how to work through the different companies. Paying for something to browse and make a decision about feels like a pig and a poke to me. Thank-you but no thank-you.

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