Books on tape have been around for a long time. As technology advanced to accommodate varying media outlets, books on tape began to be referred to as audio books. Containing recordings of the entire contents of a book, audio tapes can be obtained on cassettes, CDs and, more recently, digital formats.

Now a multi-million dollar enterprise, audio books are

widely accepted for entertainment, as teaching aids for special needs students and for others who want to acquire particular information on a wide range of subjects while involved in other activities.

Audio books come in several formats such as unabridged (word for word), abridged (text edited out), and fully dramatized versions including complete casts, musical scores and sound effects.

As digital devices become smaller (e.g. iPods and MP3 players), more technologically advanced and more readily accepted by the masses, creators of audio books have developed techniques for downloading and retrieval of files.

This article will address the procedure for downloading an audio CD to an iPod, so audio book files can be played there.

1)Set optimal iTunes import settings to audiobooks.

2) Insert CD and wait for tracks to appear in iTunes. Do not select automatic. Select all CDs tracks, and choose Join CD Tracks from the advanced menu. Note: If the Join CD Tracks menu item is dimmed, you will have to re-sort the list by the track number.

3)Select Submit CD Track Names on advanced menu.

4)In the CD Info dialog box, complete information about the audio book.

5)Click OK, to submit. You may be prompted to Select CD Category, if so, choose Books & Spoken, and then click OK.

6)When the submission process is completed, all of the tracks on the CD should have the appropriate information attached to them. Click the Import button (top right corner) to import this disc, using the import settings you set up initially.

7)When the import finishes, eject the CD.

8)Switch to your Library, and find the newly imported track. There should be only one. Select it, and press Command-I to do a Get Info on the track, and switch to the Info tab.

9)Verify information is there. The song Name will be the same name as the album. Since the Name will be what you see on your iPod, you should add the disc sequence number. The shorter the format the better. (e.g. xx/yy xx being the disc number and yy being total number of discs. Add a leading zero to the disc number if the total number of discs will be more than one digit. This way, the tracks will sort correctly when sorted by Name.

10)Switch to the Options panel, and check both the Remember playback position and the Skip when shuffling checkboxes Remember playback position tells iTunes and the iPod to make the file bookmarkable. Skip when shuffling keeps the spoken word track out of your random music mixes.

11)Repeat this process for the each CD in the audio book, until you have imported all of the CDs.

12)Sync to your iPod, and enjoy.

In today hectic society with its emphasis on multi-tasking, audio books serve a dual purpose. They give busy people the opportunity to keep current with literary works while still maintaining their active lifestyles.