[Dtb-talk] bookshare vs. nls

Fri Mar 12 17:25:41 UTC 2010

I know some of the payed narrators are actors between acting jobs.
Yes some regional libraries like Florida use prison help infixing equipment.
You might ask some of these questions to your library and report back to the 
list.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Gilmore" <m_b_gilmore at yahoo.com>
To: "Discussion of Digital Talking Books" <dtb-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2010 11:15 AM
Subject: Re: [Dtb-talk] bookshare vs. nls

Don't get me wrong: I think NLS does a great job. In fact, there's a couple 
of narrators who do a fantastic job. Merwin Smith is at the top of my list; 
he's the reason I got into Robert Ludlum (plus Ludlum's a great writer.) I 
also enjoy Bob Askey and David Hartley-Margolin (is it me or does DHM sound 
similar to Bob Askey on recordings recorded circa 2002 and forward? DHM 
sounds younger on Without Remorse by Clancy [1993 recording] and similar to 
Bob Askey on Clancy's Red Rabbit [2002].) Is there any place where we can 
read short biographies of these gentlemen or other favorite narrators? Is 
Merwin Smith still alive and recording?
(As a side note, I must say that I ordered a book that was narrated by 
another narrator recently. I found out Merwin Smith had done it originally 
twenty some-odd years ago and this was a reissue. Smith's recording is still 
available. Had i known, I would've ordered it because the reissued book by a 
new narrator ruined the book. Although, the guy did do a good job on a Jack 
Higgins novel and was all right on an Agatha Christie novel.) How does NLS 
get its narrators like DHM, Bob Askey, Merwin Smith, etc.? Are these folks 
retired or what? How much are they payed? (I ask because I had someone back 
in my college days tell me that the folks that read these books on tape are 
prisoners. That would make sense because prisoners have a lot of time on 
their hands; however, your average inmate won't be able to be dramatic and 
do accents and voices and all that good stuff. Plus, I doubt sophisticated 
recording equipment is brought into the cell or there's a studio at
 the prison.) I also love how we never hear them turn a page or pause when 
flipping the page.

As far as commercial audio, I noticed NLS was listing titles and I always 
like to see who the narrator was. I remember Anne Haish (sorry for the 
misspelling) and Carolyn McCormick (better known as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet on 
Law & Order or as Minuet, the holodeck distraction of Riker in the STTNG 
episode 1001001) narrated a couple and I was surprised. I also noticed that 
a couple of NLS recordings are taped at the slow speed; however, instead of 
four sides per cassette, it's two but at the slower speed. So, side 3 and 4 
are cassette two, so on and so forth. I remember being surprised and was 
wondering what is up with this.

The only problem withe commercial audio books is the book is severely edited 
(which is why NLS rocks because you get the full book.) The Star Trek 
commercial audio is cool because you've got sound effects and the actors 
reading the book; but, a lot of stuff gets cut out and it is a trip hering 
one actor try to imitate the rest of his or her cast mates (unless it's 
Scotty doing an STTNG book trying to do Data--you can tell he'd never seen 
the show because he does Data like a robot, and, as we all know, he is an 
android.) When did the entire book start to be put out on commercial audio 
instead of an edited version?

Mike

--- On Thu, 3/11/10, Flint Million <fmillion at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Flint Million <fmillion at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Dtb-talk] bookshare vs. nls
To: "Discussion of Digital Talking Books" <dtb-talk at nfbnet.org>
Date: Thursday, March 11, 2010, 5:27 PM

I forgot to mention that NLS is now getting permission to simply adapt
existing commercial audiobooks, which is actually a nice thing for us
blind folks. They take the commercial CD book, encrypt it and insert
DAISY markers, and distribute it to us. Saves them the effort of the
volunteer reading, which is really nice. And in some cases, commercial
books are already nicely arranged for them (e.g. each CD track is one
chapter)

FM

On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 4:25 PM, Flint Million <fmillion at gmail.com> wrote:
> There does not seem to be much rhyme or reason to how NLS is deciding
> which books to convert to digital format. The only thing they've said
> about this in their documents is as follows:
>
> Q: Why are some books from a series missing? Why are some magazine
> issues missing?
> A: Production schedules can cause inadvertent delays.
>
> Pretty vague, eh?
>
> In either case, Bookshare tends to be able to expand their library
> faster because they're not doing real human readings of the books.
> Their content comes from volunteers who scan or convert materials into
> text format. then they simply DAISY-ify them and throw them up on the
> site. In contrast, NLS must have a volunteer reader read the content
> into digital form (or convert the existing cassette version), then
> have someone scan through the recording to insert all of the DAISY
> navigation points. It can be quite a laborious process. Also, it does
> seem that Bookshare has a lot more of a "blanket" copyright exemption
> in place, while NLS titles announce "with the permission of the
> copyright holder". Maybe this also causes NLS delays, at least in
> getting new titles produced. As for why they have only spanish
> versions of some books, that's just their quirky schedule at work, but
> it does mean it's likely that the english version will be soon to
> follow, hopefully.
>
> FM
>
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 12:02 PM, Mike Gilmore <m_b_gilmore at yahoo.com> 
> wrote:
>> I've been browsing bookshare's list of books. I've liked that it and NLS 
>> have a lot of the same stuff; however, I was also impressed that it has 
>> books that NLS does not. For example, there are two Agatha Christie books 
>> that bookshare has that NLS does not. Actually, one of the books NLS does 
>> have but it's in Spanish, which is kind of odd considering that Agatha 
>> Christie is a British author and they have pretty much all of her other 
>> stuff in English except for the title I'm talking about (it's a Poirot 
>> book.) So, why put all of the Poirot books in English recordings except 
>> for one and put that in Spanish? Thank goodness for bookshare for those 
>> of us who want to read all of the books or series by a particular author!
>>
>> Mike
>>
>>
>>
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>

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