Mobile Computing | News
Duke Libraries Offers E-Books and Audiobooks for Personal Mobile Devices
Duke University Libraries has launched
a new service, called Duke OverDrive,
which lets students, faculty and staff download e-books and audiobooks to their
personal mobile devices, including iPhones, iPads, Nooks, Android phones and
tablets and Kindles.
The Duke OverDrive service went live in May and currently offers 158 e-books
and 132 audiobooks, all of which are searchable through the general Duke
Libraries catalog. Faculty, students and staff with a Duke NetID can borrow up
to five of the books at a time, and the books automatically expire after 21
days. Patrons can also recommend additional titles; the library will add the
recommendations to its wish list for future purchases once funds become
available.
Since the service is a partnership between Duke Libraries and the Ford
Library at the Duke Fuqua School of Business, many of the books are on
business-related topics such as careers and finance. However, a number of the books,
such as "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell and "Predictably Irrational" by
Dan Ariely, a professor at Duke, are of general interest as well, as are the
numerous fiction books in the collection.
The Duke OverDrive service enhances the university's existing
e-reader program, which offers
Kindle devices for checkout. However, the library has only a limited number of
Kindles, and the ebooks on the Kindles can't be loaned without the physical
device.
According to Meg Trauner, director of the Ford Library, the service is
popular with students in Fuqua's Weekend Executive Master of Business
Administration program because they can listen to the audiobooks during their
commute.
Further information about the Duke OverDrive service can be found on the
Duke Libraries site.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].
