First of all, you may be wondering what is YOTO and what is a YOTO card?
Yoto is a screen-free, interactive audio player designed for children aged 3-12+, featuring the Yoto Player (original) and the smaller Yoto Mini. It plays stories, music, and educational content via physical cards, allowing kids to explore content independently. The device is safe, ad-free, and includes features like a pixel display, nightlight, Bluetooth speaker functionality, and app-based parental controls.
These cards have become a popular alternative to audiobooks on CD or audiobooks that download to a computer or smartphone because the YOTO cards are easy and safe for even very young children to use. The cards are almost impossible to break or damage, and they only contain the content that you purchase or choose to add to the make-your-own cards.
If these audiobooks on cards appeal to you, you might want to do a survey of your patron families to see how many of them would be interested in checking out YOTO cards from your library. If several or many of your patrons already have YOTO players, or if you yourself already own a YOTO player and some cards, you may want to consider lending these popular audiobooks from your library.
To get started, you will need to purchase a YOTO player, either the larger YOTO Player or a YOTO mini , for the library. Some libraries have purchased multiple YOTO players to have some available for checkout. My library has only one YOTO player, mine, but many of my families already had YOTO players in the home. When you get your player, you will need to set up an account in the YOTO app either on your phone or your computer or both.
You can purchase pre-made YOTO cards with popular children’s books and stories from YOTO. You probably want to stick with the classics such as Winnie the Pooh, Anne of Green Gables, the Narnia stories, and other similar time-tested literature. YOTO has lots of more current and media-related cards, but it is a secular company. Some content may not be suitable for a living books library.
The best deal for the money and quality is YOTO’s Make-Your-Own cards. These cards can be linked to any mp3 file audiobooks that you own or can legally download. (Books purchased on Audible cannot be linked to a Make-Your-Own card because Audible users do not actually own the content that was purchased from Audible.) However, audiobooks on CD that you own can be downloaded to your computer as mp3 files and then linked to a YOTO card and made available for checkout. You can also purchase audiobooks from libro.fm or download public domain from Librivox to link to your YOTO Make-Your Own cards.
From Lia Carta, librarian at The Decatur Book Bus (from Facebook):
“Think of each YOTO card as a physical book. If I loan you a MYO card you can play it with any YOTO. The book will show up in your account on your phone but will erase automatically when the next person checks it out. I started with a family account but found I prefer to let patrons create their own accounts. If I have (2) copies of a Make Your Own card of the same book, they act as two separate, individual books. When you buy a card from YOTO it works in any YOTO player. If the Jones family checks out the Yoto Wizard of Oz card it will play in their player and show up on their app. When the Smith family checks out that same card a month later it will erase from the Jones' app and go to the Smith app.”
How I got my YOTO cards ready for checkout:
I have a few pre-made YOTO cards purchased from YOTO, but mostly Make-Your-Own cards that are linked to audio content from Librivox and other sources. Instructions for linking the MYO cards is available in the YOTO app, and I found it to be fairly easy and intuitive. And fast. It’s not like making a recording. The content, if it’s been uploaded to the app, links to the card in seconds. To identify each card, I made stickers with the book covers and stuck them to the cards using an app called Canva.