Audio Update: Listen Up, Vermont!

I'm always running behind the times,
Just like this train...
Shaking into town with the brakes complaining...
--Joni Mitchell

There's hardly any technology that's out there and in full bloom that I'm not the last to acquire. When vinyl was replaced by cassettes, and cassettes by CDs, I was literally the last on my block. Now I've latched onto an MP3 player, aware that the rest of the world revels in iPods.

You can bury me with a Blackberry. It'll be the only contact I have with one, and by then they'll be obsolete.

But I digress. However outmoded the MP3 player may be, I'm having a great time using it to download books through Listen Up, Vermont!, the consortium of Vermont libraries that has led the way in providing downloadable audiobooks state-wide.

What fun it is to go to the web site, queue up for books, then download them to my computer and then transfer them to my little 8-gigabyte MP3 player. The entire experience has me feeling almost contemporary. You can also burn the books to CDs or listen from your computer.

I love the selection. I've listened to a ridiculous range of materials: Milton's Paradise Lost, Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch mysteries, the new biography of Andrew Jackson, the autobiography of Helen Keller, and Whitman's Leaves of Grass. They play as smoothly (as Linda Richman would have it) like buttah... no cracks or skips or digital woozies. And the collection continues to grow.

I have DSL at home, so downloading is quick and easy. If you who live in the glorious countryside have a slower dial-up capability, come into the library, as some of our patrons are doing, and download books here. Bring your iPod or MP3 player, and we'll help you get started.

Use this link to check out the growing selection, then dust off your library card and join me in taking advantage of one of NPL's hottest new deals.

If You Don't Have Time to Build a Tower...

Too many books? Too little time?

If your schedule doesn't permit the construction of an imposing tower or cozy cabin out of all your excess books, you may want to give them to NPL's Friends of the Library instead.

Their next book sale will be held on March 27-28, and they're looking for donations.

If you have books to donate, bring them into NPL during our normal business hours.

If their bulk and number threaten to overtake you, give us a call. There are members of the Friends who will come over to pick them up.

Please don't include textbooks, Reader's Digest condensed books, or books with mold or mildew in your donations. They just don't sell.

The Friends are hard at work, helping to raise funds to keep NPL alive and thriving during some very challenging times.

They're the best of Friends!