I read a lot for pleasure, or at least used to before grad school, but it wasn’t until a couple of classes last semester that I used audiobooks really at all. For two classes I had to listen to audiobook versions of a couple of books, and found I did enjoy it - it was like having the radio on going while cleaning or doing chores, except it was a long story. For the Twelfth thing, since I’d be interested in listening to audiobooks more, I decided to try the Audiobooks streaming app, which has access to almost 3,000 classic titles. There seems to be a wide variety of titles, including the 9/11 Commission Report and titles in other languages.
The “American Indian Fairy Tales” title I started streaming was created by LibriVox, a collection of public domain audiobooks read by volunteers. The sound quality was fine. There was an ad bar at the bottom, but otherwise the interface is very simple text based and straightforward. In my personal life I could see using this in the car (not with headphones!) for short or long trips, though I imagine it might eat battery power. With titles in other languages (only one in Japanese), it might be a fun way to do some language immersion/practice, too. Professionally, the Audiobooks app might be a good app to point out for patrons, to give them handy access to scads of listening materials. It could be especially helpful for English learners, to listen to perhaps while following along in print. It also, with LibriVox, might give patrons a platform to record and share audio books themselves.
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