Libraries going digital to stay in touch with technology

Technology has changed the way we do things today. Everything seems to be going digital making information and entertainment more accessible. What we listened to on a walkman is today listened to on an Apple iPod. Similarly, some libraries in the US are planning to generate a hybrid kind of mechanism to lend books to stay up to date with technology protecting themselves from Internet piracy of digital books.

These librarians are now letting their readers download titles they can listen on their computers or portable music players. However, the current technology these libraries are adopting is not compatible with the popular Apple iPod device. Apparently, the format is optimized for the windows platform. This can also be blamed on the fact that Apple keeps their iPod standard proprietary and does not let other music stores to sell music for it.

OverDrive Inc. and NetLibrary are helping these groups to offer digital versions of the books in the libraries in Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Media Audio format. These files are powered by Digital Rights Management encryption, which let the library decide on how long the downloadable file would be usable to the end user.

This also helps them limit the piracy of the digital content considering the file would not be usable upon sharing with other users after a certain period of time. Steve Potash, chief executive of OverDrive said in a statement about their technology: “The patron doesn’t have to do anything after the lending period. The file expires. It checks itself back into the collection. There’s no parts to lose. It’s never damaged. It can never be late.”