[Dtb-talk] A question about preferred book formatting

[Greg Kearney]

As Tim has so well put production is a process of making choices. Let  
me explain what we have and what we are now delivering:

We have a collection of over 7000 books on cassette masters. These  
books, mostly popular reading fiction, were never tone indexed.

When we convert these books to DAISY we digitize the books in  
dedicated machines built for that use. We end up with wav audio files.  
These files then are imported into Obi where they are split into 10  
minute phase segments and have their tape announcements at the  
beginning and end of each tape removed. We also add three level one  
segments, one of the title and author, one called "About this digital  
talking" book which explains the navigation, copyright and so on and  
one call "Preliminary pages"  This last section has everything up to  
the start of the actual book, things like the book jacket, preface,  
etc.. Then we start with what could be thought of as tape one, we call  
them parts, and make a new part for each tape in the book. Navigating  
forward take you to the start of each new tape. each tape has 10  
minute phases with in it.

When we are done we save the resulting DAISY book with the audio in  
play back order in MP3 format, We include playlist files for a wide  
range of MP3 players such as iPods in the DAISY file sets as well. We  
also include a MARC record for each book in the event a library would  
need it. In this way the book can be played on non-DAISY devices if  
needed.

 From time to time we discover a book where we are able to visually  
see the chapter breaks. When this is the case we will provide chapter  
navigation but this is very rare. Usually it is either because the  
original narrator left and unusually long pause in the reading or we  
have a very few tapes that have tone indexing which is simple to detect.

Since starting to record digitally all new books provide full chapter  
navigation and when we produce textbooks and other academic materials  
we also provide page number navigation as well. The same is the case  
with book produced with synthetic narration.

All of this is done with very limited staff, basically myself and one  
other person and a group of dedicated volunteers. In the end we will  
do about 1000 of the 7000 books and wait for the others to be  
requested by someone before producing them. Hence if you go to http://www.guidedogswa.org/library/ 
  you can request production of a little over 50,000 title of which  
only 7000 are from the old tape master collection. We have to  
compromise in order to convert the largest number of tapes in a timely  
fashion. We also convert tapes for others (http://www.guidedogswa.org/production/ 
), when we do so we offer them either option but to sit through a  
recording to provide full navigation is more expensive.

Hope this clears things up a bit.

Gregory Kearney
Manager - Accessible Media
Association for the Blind of Western Australia
61 Kitchener Avenue, PO Box 101
Victoria Park 6979, WA Australia

Telephone: +61 (08) 9311 8202
Telephone: +1 (307) 224-4022 (North America)
Fax: +61 (08) 9361 8696
Toll free: 1800 658 388 (Australia only)
Email: gkearney at gmail.com

On 30/01/2010, at 6:50 AM, Tim Gillett wrote:

> Peter,
>
> I dont want to come across sounding like an apologist for Talking  
> Book producers
> who dont add full DAISY navigation to an old recording,
> but as Greg said,  to add navigation to a title that never had  
> navigation markers in the first place
> is much harder than if freshly recording the book with DAISY   
> recording software.
>
> To my knowledge there is no magic software program which can  
> recognize the chapter breaks in the narrator's voice.
> At some point book producers have to make a decision on a case by  
> case basis as to whether it is worth
> converting a given title to digital at all, let alone manually add  
> complex  DAISY navigation.
>
> Limited resources have to be used in the best possible way for the  
> benefit of all readers.
> So the time spent adding navigation to one old title might   be  
> better spent  digitising ten other old titles
> - but with no navigation added -  that otherwise would never have  
> been digitised at all.
>
> If producers chose to spend hours adding DAISY navigation to one  
> obscure  title that almost nobody ever borrowed,
> instead of plain digitising  ten  popular titles, I guess there  
> would justifiably be an outcry amongst readers.
> The democractic principle comes in at some point.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tim Gillett
> Audio/Electronics Technician
> Perth, Western Australia
>
>
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