[Dtb-talk] bookshare vs. nls

Sat Mar 13 01:54:21 UTC 2010

Mike,

To my knowledge when NLS first started using the cassette  it recorded them
 at half speed but with only two tracks. The four tracks were a later 
development .

Tim

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Gilmore" <m_b_gilmore at yahoo.com>
To: "Discussion of Digital Talking Books" <dtb-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2010 12:15 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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