At Milwaukee's Central Library, the books on tape and CD are tucked away in a dark corner of the first floor, but a new statewide program is bringing those titles a few clicks away for anyone with a library card and a computer.

The Wisconsin Public Library Consortium last fall launched an online digital audio book catalogue and now has more than 600 titles available for download. The only catch: You can't download the files directly to an iPod, the most popular of the portable mp3 players.

That hasn't stopped people who know about the program from downloading books, such as "Spanish on the Move" and C.S. Lewis' Narnia series. The system works for people who have Microsoft-based mp3 players or burn the files to a regular old audio CD.

The system's not being compatible with Apple's iPod is the biggest complaint about the system, according to Bruce Gay, the technical services director for the Milwaukee Public Library.

OverDrive Inc., the Cleveland-based company Wisconsin's library consortium contracts with to provide the titles, doesn't have a license to the use the iTunes or iPod systems, a problem that doesn't exist with Microsoft's Windows Media player or mp3 players that use Microsoft technology.

"Apple has refused to license to third parties their copy- protection technology," said Steve Potash, OverDrive's president. "It's unfortunate that Apple and iPod have created an exclusionary channel."

But with Apple controlling between 65% and 75% of the portable mp3 player market, the company has no incentive to allow companies such as OverDrive to use its technology, according to Michael Gartenberg, who studies emerging technologies for Jupiter Research in New York. Gartenberg said library systems such as OverDrive, which supplies audio books for more than 2,000 libraries across the country, are destined to come up short if they can't connect with iPods.

"What's interesting is that if we see more of these types of services, will that start to shift the market to the Microsoft brands?" Gartenberg said. "At the end of the day customers will choose whether that's important. For the time being, they're tending to choose the iPod."

The online state library consortium chose OverDrive, library officials said, because when they began shopping for an online audio book provider, it was the only product available.

"OverDrive was the only one that had a product ready to deliver," said Linda Miller, a Rockford, Ill., consultant who serves as the consortium's project coordinator.

How it works

To access the online audio book library, you have to have a library card number from a participating library. The Milwaukee County and Waukesha County library systems are members, but Racine County's libraries are not.

The first step is to download the free OverDrive software onto a Windows-based computer. Once you have the software, select the book you'd like. If the file is already checked out, you'll be placed on a waiting list and will receive an e-mail when it's your turn.

If the book is ready, you download it to your computer and have two weeks to listen to it or burn it to an audio CD. Once the two weeks passes, the file's license expires and, if there is a waiting list, you'll have to get back in line to check out the book again.

The state consortium launched its online audio book program with about 300 titles and has grown to 642. With little fanfare and almost zero advertising, audio books have been downloaded more than 4,300 times, with more than half of those coming from Milwaukee County libraries.

As of Friday, 21 people were on the waiting list to get one of four of the state's licenses to C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." All seven books in Lewis' Narnia series are in the top 10 on the state's waiting list, Gay said.

Because they're not compatible with iPods, the people who are downloading the audio books, Wisconsin librarians say, are likely burning the files to a CD and listening to them in their cars.

"People are listening to them on trips," said Mellanie Mercier, the library automation coordinator for the Waukesha County Federated Library System.

Bambi Butzlaff Voss of Nashotah downloaded French and Spanish classes through the Hartland Village Library's Web site. She burned the files to audio CDs and plans to listen to them in her car and while staining her deck this summer.

"I downloaded them, and my plan is to get better at both languages," said Butzlaff Voss, a public relations specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha.

Expanding the program

Gay predicted that, within five years, libraries' entire audio book collection will be available for online checkout.

Wisconsin's system is accumulating titles at the rate of about 50 a month. At between $20 and $50 for each electronic license, it's cheaper than buying books-on-CD, and because the files erase themselves two weeks after they are checked out, the libraries don't have to pester scofflaws to return anything.

"There are real pluses for us," Gay said. "Nothing gets broken, nothing gets lost and everything gets back on time."

HOW IT WORKS

-- Download and install the free PC-based OverDrive software from dbooks.wplc.info.

-- Use your library card number to log into the system and select the book you'd like.

-- When it's your turn for the book, download the audio mp3 file to your computer.

-- After two weeks, the file will expire, but it can be saved by burning it to an audio CD.

Copyright 2006, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. (Note: This notice does not apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through wire services or other media.)

Copyright 2006 Journal Sentinel Inc. Note: This notice does not apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through wire services or other media
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.