[Dtb-talk] bookshare vs. nls

[Andrews, David B B (DEED)]

Mike:

Both Merwin Smith and Bob Askey have retired, Smith some time ago.  I met Smith in the early 80's, did a radio reading service program on Talking Books Publishing Company, back in 1981 or 2.  He was amazing, read for 4 hours in morning, ahd lunch, and read for four more.  I heard his voice eventually gave out but don't know that for a fact.

The majority of NLS books are read by professional, paid narrators.  These guys and gals are not prisoners.  I don't know what they are paid, but presume that they make a decent living wage like most professionals.  

There are organizations that use prisoners for narration, and putting stuff in Braille, but more at the local level.  I have run a prison volunteer program, and it isn't easy.  Quite frankly, most people in most prisons simply don't have the education level to make good readers.

Dave



-----Original Message-----
From: dtb-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:dtb-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Mike Gilmore
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2010 10:16 AM
To: Discussion of Digital Talking Books
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