By Catherine Durivage, Director, Minnesota Braille and Talking Book Library

(Editor’s Note:  Catherine made this presentation at our Annual Convention on October 10, 2015.)

Thank you for the opportunity to speak at your convention today.  It’s always a pleasure to share with all of you news about the library. 

Let’s start with BARD.  As many of you know, BARD was unavailable for over a week towards the end of August and the beginning of September.  I know this was very frustrating for many of you as it was for us.  The problem occurred at the Library of Congress, not at National Library Service, but I know this is little consolation when you are desperately in need of reading material.  However, you can always contact us and we will send out by mail any available audio and braille books. 

Now, for some better news, the BARD Mobile App for 2^nd generation Kindles and other Android devices is now available.  While braille is not accessible on BARD Mobile App for Kindle and Android devices, you can read talking books and magazines. 

• Fully accessible with TalkBack
• Browse the BARD collection and download from your wish list
• Read at speeds up to 300%
• Built-in user guide

The next version of BARD Mobile App for iOS devices is forthcoming, but I’m afraid I don’t have a release date.  One of the new features coming in the new version will be a sleep timer among other things, like the option to subscribe to a series, so when a new title is added to a series, you will be notified.  You can now be notified when new issues of subscribed magazines are available. 

I am also happy to report that the tone/speed slider bar is now back in the latest version of the iOS software. 

MN BARD continues to be popular.  In terms of popularity, the iPhone is the most registered device, followed by the iPad, then the iTouch and finally Android devices. 

NLS continues to add more commercially produced audio books to the collection.  In fact, NLS added 2,876 books to the collection, including 900 commercial audio books.  This is the most books NLS has ever added to the collection.  NLS has agreements with Audible, Hachette, Penguin Random House and Scholastic to make their audio books available to you.  NLS select about 20 books each week from these publishers. 

For those of you who subscribe to magazines on cartridges, you can now keep them longer.  Yeah!  The cartridges that contain only weekly magazines can be kept for three weeks instead of one and those cartridges that contain monthly magazines can be kept for seven weeks rather than four.  Remember, audio magazines on cartridges must be returned. 

NLS recently launched their own Facebook page along with a new public education website themed That All May Read.  The website contains information about the program, how to sign up and a video featuring several patrons discussing their experiences with the program.  You can find NLS’s Facebook page and their public education campaign webpage.

As I have mentioned in previous speeches, NLS is moving to Unified English Braille in January, when all books and magazines will be produced in UEB.  In the Sept/Oct 2015 issue of Braille Book Review (LP and BR) you will find an UEB Reference Guide.  You may want to keep this issue for reference, but you will also find a link on the NLS webpage a brf file on Frequently used UEB Symbols.  If you would like a hard copy braille version, contact the library.  If you are a BARD user, you will find 42 UEB titles available to download.  The easiest way to access what’s available in UEB on BARD is to use the Subject search and select Unified English Braille from the dropdown menu. 

I’m sure this is not news to many of you, but now patrons can access audio versions of Talking Book Topics (TBT) and Braille Book Review (BBR) through NFB-NEWSLINE.  Once they register for NFB-NEWSLINE, patrons will find the Talking Book Topics (TBT) and Braille Book Review (BBR) under the Blindness Specific sub-category of Magazines.  Each annotation is listed as a separate article, allowing patrons to easily navigate the magazines in search of relevant titles.  If a patron decides a book is of interest, he or she may press #9 to have its annotation e-mailed to him or her for later reference. 

If you are receiving any publications by mail and no longer want to, please contact us so we can adjust your subscriptions.  I know many of you use BARD or NFB-NEWSLINE to access our magazine collection, so if you want to cancel your mailed subscriptions, let us know. 

As for happenings here at your library, we have some things in development.  We are working on offering customized cartridges, or what we refer to as one-to-many or patroncentric cartridges.  What this means is that more than one book or magazine could be placed on a single cartridge.  It could be a number of individual book titles or magazine issues, or books by the same author, or on the same subject or in a series.  The options are numerous.  There are many logistical things yet to work out, but we are hopeful this will be available soon to all of you.  

Sometime next year, we will begin to offer descriptive DVDs.  Our VHS descriptive video collection, while popular, is outdated and is no longer the preferred video format.  We are making every effort to order only those titles that contain a descriptive audio track, so stay tuned. 

Our advisory committee meets next at the Minnesota Department of Education on Monday, November 9 at 1:00 p.m.  We have a committee of five members: Rebecca Kragnes, Adrienne Haugen, Bryce Samuelson, Dale Heltzer and Maureen Pranghofer.  All our meetings are open to the public. 

The library continues to work closely with Communication Center, State Services for the Blind, to improve our services to patrons.  We hold monthly training sessions with SSB staff; continue to work on a new a joint application which we hope will be easier for people unfamiliar with our services to complete; and to provide more outreach activities so more people are aware of our services. 

This concludes my remarks.  It has been a pleasure being with you today.  I enjoyed the opportunity to speak with you and hope to visit again in the future.  I will now open up the floor to any comments and/or questions.