Sutherland Shire Libraries Staff News

If anyone complains about Australian Public Affairs - Full Text (APA-FT) being slow lately it is due to increased traffic. From Informit...

Dear Informit customer

Due to an unprecedented increase in traffic, the Informit service has been exhibiting slow response times over the past two weeks.   On some occasions this has resulted in the need to restart servers causing a few 15 minute outages.

We have been working to increase server capacity to cope with this demand and are monitoring the load closely at all times to ensure the service is responsive.

Apologies for any inconvenience this has caused and thank you for your patience while we work through these issues.

Regards


Customer Support
RMIT Publishing
Level 3 / 449 Swanston Street
Melbourne, 3000

support@rmitpublishing.com.au
http://www.informit.com.au/allsupport.html

Tel +61 3 9925 8222
Fax +61 3 9925 8299

Since we launched Overdrive I have fielded several questions along the lines of, "What kind of ipod / mp3 player should I buy to listen to audiobooks downloaded from your website".

Unfortunately this is far from a straight forward question.

In the general community the popularity of the Apple product line has led to the word "ipod" almost becoming the generic name for audio players.

Only Apple make ipod's. Every other manufacturer has a different name for their portable media players.

Although ipods (and Macintosh computers) will play mp3 files they will not play wma files. (wma is the file format for most of our overdrive audiobooks)

Almost all other brands of audio players will claim to play wma files. But that is no guarantee that they will play wma audiobooks downloaded from sutherland.lib.overdrive.com

The problem is with digital rights management (DRM), a software based way to protect copyright.

The wma audiobooks on sutherland.lib.overdrive.com have a level of DRM protection which can be decoded by your home PC, (Not Mac) but many audio players (even though they can play unprotected wma files) cannot handle the DRM protection used by overdrive.

To further confuse the issue, the problem exists even within the same product line so its not even safe to assume that say all Creative mp3 players are suitable.

(For example if you buy a Philips GoGear HDD1630 it will play wma audiobooks from overdrive. Buy a Philips GoGear SA3245 and it will NOT! - Dont ask me how I know :-( )

So to get back to the original question "What kind of ipod / mp3 player should I buy to listen to audiobooks downloaded from your website"

The only safe reply is to refer the user to the Overdrive Device Resource Center, which is linked from our Sutherland Shire Libraries Digital Downloads page at sutherland.lib.overdrive.com - Getting Started - Supported Audio Devices

Here they will find a list of players which have been tested and found to work with Overdrive wma audiobooks.

Whether or not these players are sold on the Australian market is another issue.

Any questions, please contact me.

cheers,
Max.

In the good ole USA, down south in Alabamy, Jefferson County Library Co-operative have compiled a wiki for Overdrive support. Its worth a look and just may have the answer to your next overdrive support query.

Problem:
When attempting to download wma audio titles users may get an error message such as: "The parameter is incorrect error 0x80070057" or, When you select Get Media it reads "error 0x80070057."

Solution:
The error is usually the result of a problem with DRM (Digital Rights Management) and can be resolved by resetting the DRM for Windows Media Player. Please perform the following steps to reset the DRM.

First, please delete the DRM folder on your computer. Depending on your OS, it can be found in different locations:
Windows 2000 and XP: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\DRM
Windows 98: C:\Windows\All Users\DRM
Windows Millennium Edition: C:\Windows\DRM

If you cannot find the folder, it may be 'hidden'. Please use the following steps to view hidden files and folders.

In Windows Explorer go to Tools > Folder Options > View. Under 'Hidden files and folders' heading, make the following changes:

Select 'Show Hidden Files and Folders'
Un-check 'Hide Protected Operating System Files'
Click the button 'Apply to All Folders'. This will ensure the changes affect all folders on the system.

Secondly, re-run the Windows Media Player Security Upgrade from the OverDrive Media Console under the 'Tools' menu.

Finally, attempt to download an OverDrive Audio Book.

The provision of the Overdrive download service from public library computers is not an option because the software required , (Overdrive Media Console for Audio Books and Adobe Digital Editions for e-bboks), is primarily designed to manage the downloads of one account.

On a public computer there is no way to stop other users from going into Overdrive Media Console and downloading part or all of a title checked out to another user. For example if I checkout a 12 part audio book then download the first six parts, I can go back into Overdrive media console in say seven days and, without having to login, download the next six parts.

In addition to the above, one of the conditions under which funding was made available for our digital downloads service was that the service was designed for users to download to their home computers, not library computers.

The library internet budget does not include provision for the downloading of the large files which constitute audio and e-books. Downloading a single large audio title can take as long as 30 minutes and the demand for library public access computers is such that we cannot afford to have computers tied up for long periods whilst downloading large files. The impact of such downloads would negatively impact on network response times for all other concurrent network users.

It seems that some of our more enterprising digital download patrons find it convenient (and no doubt cheaper!) to download the often rather large overdrive audio files whilst at work.

Browsing our digital downloads website, adding items to basket and checking items out are unlikely to produce problems, however when it comes to the actual downloading, where this is attempted via a corporate firewall, error messages may occur and the patron may ask us for help.

The problem may be that the download function of Overdrive Media Console cannot get out through the firewall until it can verify the internet connection.

Ask the patron to go to Overdrive Media Console - Tools - Options -

Tick the box which says - My Internet Connection requires verification - enter username and password (the one they use at work) -

Then try the download again.