"The final report for the pilot digital talking book project, eAudio, undertaken by the Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center is now on the web at http://www.mitbc.org/eaudiofinal.doc. The project was funded with $2000 from donation funds in honor of former MITBC director, Eileen Sheppard Meyer and the Illinois State Library Talking Book and Braille Service.
The Center was able to purchase eight Otis players and approximately 50 digital audio books from Audible.com for the project. Over 100 readers expressed interest in trying the service and 70 participated in the six-month project. The goal of the project was to begin to introduce talking book readers to digital talking books, which is the eventual goal of the talking book program at the national level. Under the leadership of the Illinois State Library Talking Book and Braille Service, the digital talking book project, the Lobe Library, has now expanded to four states including Illinois, Hawaii, Mississippi, and New Jersey. During FY04, the four states will participate in a collaborative, digital audio book project with players and books from Audible.com.
For more information, go to the project website at http://www.lobelibrary.org. For more information on the Lobe Library project, contact Sharon Ruda at sruda@ilsos.net.
The evaluation report of the successful six-month project was written by Tom Peters, a national e-book expert and consultant with TAP Information Services, a consulting firm which provides a wide variety of services including strategic planning, workshops, project evaluation, conference services, articles, reports, speeches, and other. He is also the co-author with Susan Gibbons and Robin Bryan on a new LITA book entitled E-Book Functionality: What Libraries and Their Patrons Want and Expect From Electronic Book Technologies. Contact Tom Peters at tapinformation@yahoo.com." [via Lori Bell]
