What Do Academic Librarians Think About RBMedia?

Dear academic librarian,

Please help us understand RBMedia.   

For those of you who don’t know RBMedia - and until today I was one of those who had never heard of the company - RBMedia looks to be an important player in the audiobook market.

RBMedia, formed in 2017 and owned by the private equity firm Shamrock Advisors, includes the following properties:

• AudioBooks.com
• RecordedBooks
• Tantor Media 
• Gildan Books 
• HighBridge Audio 
• RBDigital
• Christian Audio 
• W.F. Howes (UK)
• Wavesound (AU) 

I’ve never tried out audiobooks.com, as I’ve been living in the Audible / Amazon ecosystem.  Do you have any experience with this platform?

Many of the audiobooks that I read are put out by Tantor, Recorded Books, and Gildan.  I had no idea that one private equity firm owns all these audiobook imprints.

So why do I think that RBMedia might be on the radar of academic librarians?

First, 4 questions.

Question #1:  Is the academic librarian community, (or maybe just you), committed to making audiobooks available through academic libraries?

Question #2:  Is there an active debate and discussion going on in the academic library world about audiobooks?

Question #3: Am I right that academic libraries do not currently have many good audiobook options, and that the reason that I keep buying books at Audible.com as opposed to borrowing audiobooks from my academic library is that there is no Audible like service available for academic libraries?

Question #4:  Am I asking the right questions?

There seems to me to be a some big reasons why academic access to audiobooks should be as robust as that of access to other types of books, and other mediums of information.  I’ll list a couple, and I hope that you add your dispute my list:

Accessibility:

As far as I understand, audiobooks have been enormously beneficial to readers (and students and professors and staff) who are visually impaired.

Equity, Access, and Privilege:

Those the with the most privilege have the greatest access to audiobooks.  Reading an audiobook means paying for an audiobook. Some members of our higher ed community have the resources to buy audiobooks.  Others do not.

One of the principals of an academic library, as far as I understand, is to provide equity of access.  If we believe that listening to a book is a valuable, distinct, and worthwhile way of gathering information for scholarship (a question that we should debate), doesn’t that mean that academic libraries should prioritize a robust audiobook initiative?

Much of what I learn for my own scholarship comes from audiobooks.  Shouldn’t everyone on our campuses enjoy this same privilege?

All this brings me back to RBMedia.

Could RBMedia have the critical mass to actually compete with Amazon / Audible?  (I wonder the same about Google).   

Does RBMedia have any plans to address the academic library market?

Might those of us in higher education play a proactive role in reaching out to RBMedia?

What sorts of relationships do academic librarians have with the big digital book providers?  Are academic librarians hanging out with folks from Amazon (Audible), Google, or RBMedia?

Where is the audiobook (and digital book) / academic library discussion occurring?