Download audiobooks from the Lane Memorial Library

As a service to commuters, the homebound, travelers, and anyone who likes to listen to a good story, the Lane Memorial Library now provides free home access to over 1300 audiobook titles. These books are available to anyone in town with a library card, a Windows PC, and an Internet connection. Featuring a library of current best sellers, classics, children’s books, language instruction, business, non-fiction titles, and novels from every genre, the Overdrive Digital Library Reserve is only a mouse-click away.

Relying on grants and funding from the New Hampshire State Library and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Lane Library was able to purchase a yearly membership in this popular service. What kinds of books are available? How about novels by James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Nicholas Sparks, Janet Evanovich and Orson Scott Card. Or New York Times bestsellers such as Freakonomics, The World is Flat, and Blink. Learn a new language, keep the kids entertained on a long trip, or just enjoy a good book while working around the house. All titles can be downloaded and played through a media PC, and in many cases burned to audio CD or transferred to a portable media player (see the Overdrive site for a list of compatible players and free software). Basic players can be purchased in area electronics stores for under $60. To listen to titles on a personal media player while traveling in the car, small FM transmitters are available that will broadcast an audiobook through the car radio. Titles may be checked out for a period of 7 days, after which the audio download automatically disappears from your computer hard drive and the title “checks itself back in” to the Overdrive service.

To start using this new service, select the audiobook link from the Lane Memorial Library site at http://hampton.lib.nh.us/. To see a video “how-to” tutorial on everything from checkouts to downloads and transfers, go to http://www.overdrive.com/files/DigitalMediaTutorial.html.