[Md-sligo] FW: Article about our State Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped

[Brown, Debbie]

-----Original Message-----
From: MCPL DRCINFO [mailto:drcinfo at montgomerycountymd.gov] 
Sent: Saturday, January 07, 2012 5:53 PM
To: Brown, Debbie
Subject: Article about our State Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped

Copied below is the text of an article about the MD State Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, from Urbanite, a Baltimore magazine. Pretty good, with quotes from Jill Lewis and other LBPH staff, although Jill says there are some minor mistakes. Read below, or follow this link to the article online: http://www.urbanitebaltimore.com/baltimore/reading-into-technology/Content?oid=1467256
 
Francie Gilman
Librarian
Disability Resource Center, Rockville Memorial Library

Reading Into Technology 


The Information Age comes to the Maryland State Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.

by Bruce Goldfarb <http://www.urbanitebaltimore.com/baltimore/ArticleArchives?author=1467255>  
 
Beneath Mount Vernon's Park Avenue, Alexandra Hewett sits at a computer monitor outside a soundproof recording booth the size of a small walk-in refrigerator, looking through a glass window while Adele Cheatham Russell speaks into a microphone.

The actresses, both volunteer narrators, take turns reading from Rafael Alvarez's Storyteller collection, adding the 269-page book to the Maryland State Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped's growing Marylandia trove and selection of digital-formatted material.

For decades the Maryland State Library for the Blind has provided access for its 12,000 patrons to a collection of 323,000 periodicals and books in large print, Braille, and audiocassette titles. Three years ago, the library began a massive duplication effort, converting its 52,516 audiocassette titles into a digital format-nearly a quarter million individual cassette tapes in all-that is now nearly complete.

While Maryland-themed books are read and recorded digitally in the local library's studio, the vast majority of titles are recorded into digital format by the National Library Services' new software.

"It's a huge project," says John Halley, a network specialist at the Maryland State Library. "Going forward, everything is being recorded digitally."

The library still sends more than 91,000 titles, delivered at no cost by the U.S. Postal Service, across the state on audiocassette each year. Many patrons, particularly seniors, prefer the old-style cassette players, even though the tapes are prone to twist, break, and wear out, explains Jill Lewis, director of the Maryland State Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.

But that number is dropping as more sight-impaired clients adopt the newer talking-book digital reader approved by the Library of Congress' National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Last year, the Maryland State Library for the Blind sent out almost as many digital-formatted titles, 87,000, as audiocassette titles.

The updated, user-friendly reader features oversize buttons and utilizes a flash drive with a standard USB port in a plastic case about the size of a cassette tape.

More recently, the Maryland State Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped has begun offering audio books via digital download. And, like everybody else, growing numbers of blind and low vision people are using the Web as well as portable digital devices and smartphones to gain access to information and make life a little more manageable.

Software, such as Jaws, "speak" text from computer screens out loud, allowing the sight-impaired to surf the Internet, use email, work, or play games and shop, if so inclined. For many, the iPhone has been a godsend. There are now apps that make an iPhone function like a magnifying glass, read the denominations on paper money, or tell you the color of clothing.

"Having a high-resolution camera is a huge benefit to the visually impaired," says library staffer Jerry Price, who is blind and heads up the library's technology user group. "Apple has definitely gotten our attention."

The library also administers the Maryland Accessible Textbook program. Blind and low-vision college students-as well as others with disabilities-have long struggled with textbook issues, suffering academically because course materials are not available in a format they can use. While the technology exists to convert a textbook from print to an accessible format such as audio, the process in the past wasn't fast enough to meet the needs of students.

"Students couldn't get their textbooks in time," Lewis says. "They'd get them late or after the semester was over."

Under a state law enacted in 2007, new provisions were put in place for on-time delivery of accessible textbooks to post-secondary students with print reading disabilities.

Stephanie Durnford, a library program assistant who works on MAT, says the program is exploding, with 250 textbook requests from about 85 students in the last five months. Typically, it may take a week to ten days to receive electronic files from the publisher, re-flow the text around sidebars and boxes, and convert it into audio or a device-readable format.

For one university student with an urgent need for a textbook, Durnford was recently able to obtain PDF files from the publisher that the student could have spoken aloud on a reader, delivering the material the same day the request was received. "We don't usually turn things around that quickly," Durnford says. "But we try."

Since Halley began working at the library, his father, Jack, has lost much of his sight and has become a library patron. A retired IT systems manager and former Towson resident, 81-year-old Jack Halley was diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration about eleven years ago.

Never a big fan of television, as his vision deteriorated Jack most of all missed his regular library trips to peruse the latest popular fiction. "I was always a pretty prolific reader, going to the library at least a couple of times a month," he says.

Today Jack downloads books from the library's Braille Audio Reading Download (BARD) service with his desktop computer and transfers the files to a portable reader about the size of a deck of cards and similar to an MP3 player.

Since he began using talking books, Jack said that his reading tastes have broadened from fiction to an eclectic variety of nonfiction books, ranging from historical subjects to current events. "It's been a lifesaver for me," he says. "Otherwise I'd turn into a vegetable in front of the television."


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