The Sun Goes Down on WMA and WMV
As you may remember, OverDrive previously announced their intention to retire the WMA (audio book) and WMV (downloadable video) formats from all OverDrive collections. The good news is that despite this change almost all of our audio book collection will still be available in the MP3 format and many of our videos will continue to be available as streaming video.
The original drop dead date was set for early March. However, OverDrive is still working to gain the permissions to convert as much of the remaining WMA and WMV content to MP3 and streaming video formats as possible. As a result, WMA and WMV files will remain in our collection until May 2015, though no new titles will be available in these formats.
When the formats are retired there will be titles previously part of our collection that will still not be available in MP3 or streaming video format. These titles will automatically be removed from our collection. We will also remove the catalog records so they do not appear in our online catalog or Sierra. OverDrive will update all related articles in the OverDrive Help section in time for the May 2015 change.
This change should not result in undue complications or frustrations for our patrons. The MP3 file format has much greater compatibility than WMA and our downloadable video collection was not well used. In fact, we’ve already seen a modest increase in OverDrive video check-outs since some titles became available to stream so it seems likely that the change’s impact will be positive overall.
Lisa – CLP