Accessing Free Audiobooks via Cambridgeshire Libraries Online

The first step is not at all really surprising; you need a library card (if nothing else this acts as proof that you are resident in the Cambridgeshire County as they have to post it out to you). If you don't have one already you can apply for one via this link;

https://cambridgeshire.spydus.co.uk/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/MSGTRN/OPAC/BRWREG

Alternatively a short link is available - http://goo.gl/jOVG3

It takes about 7-10 days for you to get your card (and welcome letter) and you really can't do anything to speed this up.

Once you've got your card you'll need to go to the "Create An Account" page on the OneClickdigital website (which is partnering with Cambridgeshire County Council to deliver this service);

http://cambridgeshire.oneclickdigital.eu/Create%20User.aspx

The screen you're presented with looks something like this;

OneClickdigital: Create An Account page

Enter your library number on the left (it begins DD...) and your personal information on the right. When you'd done click the button at the bottom;

Oneclickdigital: Welcome Page

And that's it. You can now click on the "home" tab at the top-left and download away;

Cambridge Audiobook Online Library

It's a little disappointing that all I can see are 48Kbs MP3 files - but then as we're only talking about spoken-word audio you're unlikely to be missing out on the highs and the lows that you would expect to be present in, for instance, a music track.

As far as I can see it works in a similar way to a library service in that you select a book and say how long you'd want to "check it out" for. For example here is "A Ship of War" by Sean Thomas Russell showing a checkout time of 21 days;

"A Ship of War" by Sean Thomas Russell (book page)

You can pick anything from 1 day to 21 days. Whatever period you pick the "copy" you download of the book is unavailable for anyone else to borrow during that period. For example here is the "Luther: The Calling" by Neil Cross;

"Luther: The Calling" by Neil Cross (book page)

Under availability this shows "Not Available". It's likely this is due to all the "copies" of the book being already out on loan.

Yes. I know. "Not Available" for a digital copy?! Doesn't quite make sense in the digital world. However the one thing you need to bear in mind is that there is no legal requirement on book publishers to make audiobooks available to libraries in the same way there is for paper copies. Whilst what we have is far from ideal it is better than the alternative - try searching for Terry Pratchett or J K Rowling to see what publishers have chosen to not allow access to.

In fact doing a search for "everything" (and if you work in IT you'll know that if you get any results for that search it's not a good sign as generally if you go to Amazon, Apple, Tesco, etc websites and search for everything there are too many results so it won't show them to you) you'll see that there are only 1,001 titles available (this is as of February 2013);

Searching for "Everything" ... With results!

You'll notice that Art, Business & Economics, Historical Fiction, language, Music, Poetry, religion, Sagas, Technology & Industry, and Westerns are categories without a single book in them!

Similarly of the 1,001 audio books only 26 are targeted at Children.

But on the plus side only 48 are encumbered by DRM (which means you have to worry a lot more about whether or not they'll play on your device - but then you could just "borrow" it for a day to find out!). The other downloads must be just MP3's which is pretty good.

This is still a fairly new service being offered by the County Council so it will be interesting to see how (and indeed if!) it grows over the next few years.

Submitting an e-Petition to Cambridgeshire County Council

This blog post gives simple step-by-step instructions on how to create your first e-Petition on Cambridgeshire County Councils (CCC) e-Petition website.

Go to the website;

http://epetition.cambridgeshire.public-i.tv/epetition_core/community/page/index

Cambridgeshire County Council's e-Petitions Website

Select the "Register" link (top-right, highlighted above);

CCC e-Petition Website Registration Pages

 As an alternative to creating an account you can always just login with your accounts from any of the following;

CCC e-Petition Website Supported Sign-In Providers

You will still have to complete your contact details, but you will be able to use your Twitter/ Yahoo/ OpenID/ Google/ Aol account to login to the website.

Once you have registered (or if you just login on the main screen) you will see the following page;

CCC e-Petitions Website "My Activities" Page

Click on "Add a petition" on the left;

CCC e-Petition Website "Add a petition" Page

 

 

You now need to complete the petition details. The following notes maybe useful;

• What do you want to achieve? If you want to present your petition at a meeting of the Full Council then you should look at the County Councils website and pick an end-date at least 2-weeks before a meeting (but still allowing you enough time to collect signatures)
• Is this just an on-line petition or do you want the ability to submit paper signatures as well? Technically there is no reason why you wouldn't tick *both* check-boxes as you can then just submit zero signatures of the type you don't want to use but if you change your mind later it's a lot easier if you check the box at this stage!
• You will be contacted by an Officer from the County Council within a couple of days of creating your petition. It's vital your email address is up to date (and you might want to check your Spam Folder just in case!)
• If you are submitting a petition on behalf of or organisation or group it's vital that you agree a wording with them in advance - this will solve a lot of problems in the long run
• Stay away from politics (unless that's your aim). Saying how rubbish the Conservative administration is at something is unlikely to convince a) them to change their minds, or b) their supporters to sign your petition. Equally declaring what a triumph Liberal Democrat, Labour, Green, or UKIP policy is in a specific area in the text of your petition is unlikely to motivate people of a different political persuasion to sign it even less the Conservative administration to adopt it! The broader appeal you have in your petition the more likely people are to sign it and circulate it to their friends/ colleagues!

Once your petition has been approved all you need to do now is collect signatures!