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In the late 1970s and early 1980s, audiobooks began to gain a place in libraries and became part of library collections and services. The growing interest in including them in school and public libraries was concurrent with widespread use of audiocassettes at home and in business. Children and adults enjoy listening to audiobooks as much as listening to a story told by a live person. Audiobooks are a modern product combining traditional storytelling and cassette technology. Educators and librarians welcome the audiobook to mainstream library materials for its potential education and entertainment value. As commuters are trapped in traffic jams to and from work, listening to audiobooks becomes a wonderful way to catch up with books that they find little time to read. It is also a great way to pass the time after listening to music and news reports again and again. At present time, audiobook publishing has become a billion dollar industry and its increasing growth in the market seems to continue (Baird 2000).
The technology of audiobooks is by no means new. They are simply books recorded on tapes, so-called "recorded books." In 1932, the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped began offering "talking books" to the blind and people with reading related impairments (Baird 2000). In 1952, the services were expanded to include juvenile materials. Audiobooks have strong appeal primarily because of people's love of the traditional oral form of storytelling. Unlike the old timers who were enthralled by the magic of a good storyteller, the modern audience was mesmerized by a dramatic narrator of recorded stories. In 1986, the Audio Publishers Association (APA) was organized and it formally adopted "audiobook" as the accepted term for recorded books or books on tape (Baird 2000). Audiobooks have been growing continuously as a popular format in recent years. Over 22% of American households surveyed in 2001 reported someone in the house had listened to an audiobook in the previous year, twice as many as in 1995 (Varley 2002). People can listen to audiobooks while doing housework, participating in exercise, taking a trip, or undertaking anything that does not require full concentration (Baird 2000). Listening to audiobooks, in a way, has become a new form of reading because users gain an...