Audiobooks: Where Words Speak Volumes
Wednesday, June 22nd – Kayla Thompson, Adult Services
Happy summer, readers! Can you believe we are most of the way through June already? So many great things happen in June: summer vacation, pride month, the Summer Reading Program, and the Cape Girardeau Public Library’s 100th birthday (just to name a few). June also happens to be Audiobook Appreciation Month.
Oral storytelling is a tradition that is as old as time. There are many different reasons that someone might read an audiobook: because they can’t hold a book, have issues focusing, or can’t see the page. I listen to audiobooks when I have trouble sleeping or when I am driving to and from the grocery store. Audiobooks make literature more accessible for many!
A Few Interesting Facts:
-To your brain, reading with your eyes and listening to stories with your ears is the same (lovelyaudiobooks.info)!
-71,502 audiobooks were published in 2020 (according to the Audio Publishers Association)
-An estimated 131 million people listened to audiobooks in 2021
-Mysteries/Thrillers/Suspense is the most popular genre for audiobooks
-One in five Americans listen to audiobooks
-they help increase reading accuracy by 52%, comprehension by 76%, and help build vocabulary and teach pronunciation (www.westerndownslibraries.com)
-Unabridged recordings of books were invented for the blind and injured veterans (lovelyaudiobooks.info)
For more information on the history of audiobooks, check out this site: https://lovelyaudiobooks.info/audiobook-history/
Here at the Cape Girardeau Public Library, we have a few different ways to access and use audiobooks! If you tend to come to the library in person, you might have found your way to our collection of physical audiobooks. We have two options for checking out: CD audiobooks and Playaways. CD audiobooks usually come as a multidisc set. A portion of the book is loaded onto each disk and you can listen to them on any CD player or CD-compatible device. I use these the most often. I like to listen to audiobooks in my car so my CD player is most often loaded up with book disks. Playaways are portable audiobook players. Each Playaway has one book loaded on it. You just check them out, put a AAA battery in the top, and secure a pair of headphones and you are good to go! These are good for carrying with you on a nice walk or jog!
Last but not least are our digital audiobooks through the Libby app. You can download the app on your phone or tablet from the Google Play or Apple Play stores, search Cape Girardeau Public Library, and input your library card number. This will allow you to access all the eBooks and eAudiobooks that the library has to offer! It’s a great service and it’s free for patrons to use. The app is nice because it allows you to listen with headphones or through Bluetooth in your car or through a speaker.
So, if you haven’t given audiobooks a chance, I highly recommend that you give them a try today! Explore what our library has to offer. It might just surprise you!
I request a lot of audiobooks through interlibrary loan services here at the library. So if we don’t have something in-house, we can try to order it from somewhere else. Here are some of my favorites:
| Nonfiction: Me by Elton John Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt by Kara Cooney The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer The Death of Caesar by Barry S. Strauss (Interlibrary Loan) The Royal Art of Poison by Eleanor Herman (Interlibrary Loan) Fiction: |
 |
