Audiobooks
The roots of audiobooks can be
traced as far back as the 1930s, when a durable long-playing record
was created for the American Foundation for the Blind. The recordings
were made for the Library of Congress and were distributed free
throughout the United States. By 1975, audiocassette players were
standard in most new cars. Commercial recordings and rentals of
unabridged copies began in earnest when companies such as Books
on Tape and Recorded Books came into the picture. In the last decade,
the sheer number and varieties of audiobooks have mushroomed, not
to mention the various formats in which they are produced—cassettes,
CDs, MP3s and downloadable books. Be sure to visit the Canton Public
Library's eBook and
eAudiobook page for information about formats and titles that
we have available.
If you
are interested in the history of audiobooks, read Trudi M. Rosenblum's
article "From LPs to Downloads" in Publishers Weekly,
Dec. 6, 1999, p.32. Another article also by Rosenblum concentrates
on the future of audiobooks. It is titled "Audiobooks at
the Millennium" and it can be found in Publishers Weekly,
Jan. 3, 2000, p. 35. For persons with Canton Public Library cards,
both articles are accessible from our online database, InfoTrac
General Reference Center Gold.
June is
National Audiobook Month! Explore the 5,000 audio titles that
the library has acquired for you! By using "talking books"
as a subject search term in our Online
Catalog, you can retrieve and view titles from our collection.
Celebrate with us by listening to a book this month! When you
are on the go or multi-tasking, you could be reading at the same
time!
Awards and Favorites
Audie
Awards (2005
and 2004
winners): The Audie Awards are sponsored by the Audio Publishers
Assocation (APA), a not-for-profit trade organization consisting
of more than 200 companies.
Earphone
Awards: AudioFile Magazine presents Earphones Awards
to truly exceptional presentations that excel in narrative voice
and style, vocal characterizations, appropriateness for the audio
format, and enhancement of the text. Partial winning titles can
be viewed from the Books On Tape page (same link as Earphone Awards).
Staff
Favorites: The librarians of the Canton Public Library
share their favorite audiobook titles.
Meet the Stars
The narrator
of an audiobook has the power to make or break a book. His or
her voice is the one that you come to associate with a certain
character. These are the stars whose faces you won't see, but
whose voices have carried you through the trials and tribulations
of many fictional characters as well as through many historical
or factual explorations. These are the Golden Voices of the industry,
as termed by AudioFile Magazine.
Golden
Voices: AudioFile Magazine provides background
information about well-known narrators such as George Guidall,
Frank Muller, Alyssa Bresnahan, Michigan's very own Dick Hill,
plus many others.
Popular
Narrators from Books on Tape: Photos as well as brief
bios of some of the popular readers can be found here, including
Anna Fields, Michael Kramer, and more.
The
Grove: Narrator biographies and interviews from ashgroveaudiobook.com,
including another profile of Michigan's Dick Hill.
Audiobook
Publishers
All major audiobook publishers have their presence on the web.
The following unabridged publisher list is by no means complete.
Online Audiobook Distributors & Book Clubs
From these
sites, you can locate, rent or purchase audiobook titles in any
format made available by these distributors. They tend to carry
a large number of titles published by audiobook publishers. They
do not have their own recordings or imprints.
Comprehensive Websites
For industry
trends, reviews, publisher information, awards and the latest
in the field, check these two websites.
Audio
Publishers Association: A non-profit association of the
industry.
AudioFile:
A monthly magazine devoted solely to audiobooks, both abridged
and unabridged.
This Special Multimedia Collection last updated
on September 20, 2005.
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