Week 11 Prompt Response

 I feel like this week's prompt response was made for me! I listen to audiobooks almost exclusively due to my busy schedule of work, school, and having young children.  I have listened to memoirs read by their own authors, books narrated by a full cast, books with fully voiced narration, partially voiced narration and I even listened to a tween graphic novel earlier this year that was not only narrated by a full cast but also included music and sound affects to help try to make up for the illustrations that drive the majority of the story in graphic novels. 

Cahill and Moore (2017) state of audiobooks, "A good narrator ensures congruence of voice with the traits of the characters and manipulates the voice to bring a text to life" (p. 27). I have absolutely had this experience. For example, when I listened to Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley, it included a lot of the Anishinaabe native language that sounded so much more beautiful being read by a native speaker than what I could have come up with in my head. In fact, if I'm being honest, I may have skipped those sections of the physical book if I were reading it since I wouldn't have understood it. But hearing it spoken added an extra layer to the story. Narrators do really make the book come alive to me, in fact, I've had two instances of having listened to an audiobook before it was turned into a movie or TV show, and while watching them, I thought, "But that's not their voice!" while listening to the character speak because I was so attached to the narrator. 

Conversely, I have had to shut off audiobooks a couple of minutes in if I can't stand the narrator's voice. One additional thought on audiobooks is that I can see the argument that the feature on Libby that allows books to be sped up could definitely affect the tone and pacing of the book, but if that's how a reader enjoys the book, I don't think there's anything wrong with that, because everyone's own personal reading speed is different as well and we aren't going to line up exactly with what speed the author may have intended. 

As for ebooks, Dunneback and Trott (2011) note that ebook's ability to change the screen layout has an impact for readers. They state that "pacing is affected by how much text is visible on the screen. As the layout of the pages change, this can also affect the tone of the story....if the visual cues are not there, will the reader tire of the story more quickly?" (Dunneback and Trott, 2011 p. 328) Honestly, I think the accessibility benefits of being able to change font and line spacing far outweighs this. If I had a vision problem, would I rather read a book with large font where the pacing and tone was a little off, or not be able to read the book at all because I struggled seeing the words? I'd take the former. 

Discussing these mediums this week has given me a lot to think about. It's funny, because even though I listen to so many audiobooks, I don't often think to recommend books as audiobooks to my patrons. A lot of times, I present it as the second choice, for example, "Oh, the print version is checked out, are you interested in the audio?" Now I'm thinking I should start by asking if they are interested in print books, ebooks, or audiobooks, before I start readers' advisory transactions. 

References:

Cahill, M., & Moore, J. (2017). A sound history. Children & Libraries: The Journal of the Association for Library Service to Children, 15(1), 22–29. 

Dunneback, K., & Trott, B. (2011). E-books and readers' advisory. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 50(4), 325-329.