{"id":867,"date":"2012-04-10T11:59:07","date_gmt":"2012-04-10T15:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.equipmentlink.org\/blog\/?p=867"},"modified":"2012-04-10T11:59:07","modified_gmt":"2012-04-10T15:59:07","slug":"review-of-new-bookshare-features-4102012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.equipmentlink.org\/blog\/?p=867","title":{"rendered":"Review of new Bookshare features, 4\/10\/2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Features of Bookshare.org<\/strong><\/p>\n

Review by Joel Zimba, Special Projects Coordinator, MDTAP<\/em><\/p>\n

If you are a regular user of the Bookshare.org website, you may have noticed another\u00a0download option which has recently been added.\u00a0Download in MP3 Audio (Beta) now appears at the bottom of every book listing.\u00a0 Rather than receiving a file containing the text of a book in digital format, the text is converted to audio files using text-to-speech on the server side.\u00a0 The result is a group of MP3 files zipped together and encrypted using your Bookshare password.<\/p>\n

Here is how the process worked for me.\u00a0 When I clicked on the MP3 Download option, I was taken to a page which informed me my download was being prepared, and that an E-mail would be sent to me when my book was ready.\u00a0 I took my time, had some coffee, but still no download.\u00a0 Some time over the weekend, my E-mail finally arrived.\u00a0 I knew these MP3 files would be larger than a typical Bookshare transfer, so I decided to test it at home, rather than stressing our dubious office broadband.<\/p>\n

This too was a slow process.\u00a0 The 455 MB download took nearly 3 hours to complete.\u00a0 That’s right, 455 MB.\u00a0 While this is something like 1000 times larger than the text files from which the archive\u00a0was generated, it’s still not a huge file size.\u00a0 By comparison, video files can often make it into the tens of GB.<\/p>\n

Why might someone go to all of this trouble to get a book in MP3 format?\u00a0 The best answer is ease of use.\u00a0 Once I actually had the zipped archive transferred to my computer, I easily imported the entire book into iTunes and transferred it to my iPhone.\u00a0 Rather than using specialized hardware, like the NLS Digital Book Player or the Read2Go iPhone app, I could listen to my book on nearly any standard MP3 audio player.\u00a0 For the purposes of testing, I simply used my computer running iTunes.<\/p>\n

You’ll notice the word “beta” attached to the download link.\u00a0 This is a new service and will probably change over time.\u00a0 For example, I didn’t see an easy way to change the speed at which the text-to-speech engine reads the book.\u00a0 The playback was annoyingly slow to me.\u00a0 While many MP3 players allow you to speed up audio playback, the granularity may not always be as fine as what can be achieved with most specialized book readers.<\/p>\n

The download method seems cumbersome for daily use.\u00a0 Perhaps automatically transferring the files to a user’s DropBox account will be an option in the future.\u00a0 Also, I can imagine a time when streaming content might be viable.<\/p>\n

I am pleased to see Bookshare changing and growing.\u00a0 Have you noticed the “Reading History” link?\u00a0 I enjoyed glancing at the list of thousands of books I have read via Bookshare over the years.\u00a0 Happy Tenth Birthday Bookshare.<\/p>\n

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