Audiobooks from the Library
Did you know that the library has free audiobooks? At Emory, we have two main platforms for providing you streaming audiobooks: Naxos Spoken Word Library and OverDrive. These resources are great for anyone who enjoys audiobooks for school or leisure. In this post, I’ll introduce you to the platforms and discuss the benefits.
OverDrive
OverDrive features mostly popular fiction and nonfiction audiobooks; around 900 titles are available for checkout. OverDrive can be used on your computer, or you can download the app, Libby, to listen on your phone. OverDrive allows you to download and check out multiple audiobooks for 21 days at a time. You can browse for available OverDrive audiobooks on Emory’s OverDrive site under Collections ⇒ Audiobooks, or you can search for titles in LibrarySearch.
If you are hoping to listen to a recent bestseller, there may be a long hold list; if you want a shorter line, you can also sign up for a library card with Fulton County Public Library card to use their OverDrive instance (fulcolibrary.overdrive.com), which has a larger selection and often more copies than Emory Libraries.
Besides audiobooks, Emory OverDrive also hosts over 2,000 ebooks.
Naxos: Spoken Word Library
Naxos has a collection of 15,000 audiobooks in 4 different languages: English, Spanish, French, and German. While many are books from the public domain (think Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edith Wharton, etc.), there are quite a few more recent biographies, romance, science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, movie novelizations, self-help, westerns, and more. The Naxos: Spoken Word Library site can be hard to browse, but about 10,000 titles in the collection were recently added to LibrarySearch. To browse those titles using LibrarySearch, go to Advanced Search, and then type “Naxos Spoken Word” in the “Series Title” field. Try using the “Genre” filter; other metadata is not as complete.
You can listen on a desktop or download the NSWL app to listen on a mobile device. For instructions on how to create an account on the app, see the “How to Use the Naxos App” section on this page. You can download books for offline streaming through the app.
Here are some recommended audiobooks from Naxos: Spoken Word Library:
- The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #1)
- The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
- Goose Girl by Shannon Hale: (Books of Bayern #1)
- Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C.S. Lewis
- Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi
- An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
- Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
Besides Naxos: Spoken Word, Emory Libraries subscribes to three Naxos databases of streaming music: Naxos: Classical music, Naxos: World music, and Naxos: Jazz. You may want to check them out, too.
Can’t find what you’re looking for?
Not everything is available for streaming through the library or YouTube or LibriVox (librivox.org/), the public domain audiobook platform featuring reading by volunteers. There’s one other place to look—the library’s collection of audiobooks on CD. Don’t worry, we know you don’t have a CD player anymore; but you can check out a USB CD/ DVD drive at the Library Service Desk, along with a lot of other technology and equipment.
–written by Damaris Billups (she/her) and Peter Shirts, music and dance librarian. Audiobook graphic by Damaris Billups.