[Nfbk] USA Today Article on NLS talking books

[Joey Couch]

You may read the story below or check it out at USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-01-23/blind-audiobooks-co
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To Get Some Audiobooks, You've Got to be Blind

by Greg Toppo, USA TODAY



Generations of young people have thrilled to the crackling wit of Holden
Caulfield, the teenage narrator of The Catcher in the Rye. But if you
want to hear an authorized audiobook of J.D. Salinger's seminal 1951
novel, you'll need what amounts to a doctor's prescription. Salinger
died in 2010, without relinquishing the rights for an audio recording.
But U.S. copyright law grants the Library of Congress permission to
produce an audio recording or Braille edition of any published work for
the blind and physically handicapped, provided the book is distributed
free, unabridged and, in the case of recordings, on special digital
playback equipment. The library has recorded Catcher twice, both times
by the same steady narrator, who has been reading books out loud for
most of the past 40 years. Ray Hagen last laid down the Catcher tracks
in 1999, at age 63, after the original masters had deteriorated. Both
times, he says, the approach was the same: "Just read it honestly. By
his estimate, Hagen has recorded more than 500 audiobooks in 39 years.
If you or someone you know is blind or physically handicapped and
borrows those boxy little recordings of books, newspapers and magazines,
you've heard Hagen's voice. Last year, more than 850,000 people got the
free materials in the mail through the library's National Library
Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), which just
marked its 80th anniversary. Users need permission from a physician or
ophthalmologist to access the materials, which usually come through a
network of libraries. The library doesn't keep listener data, but Jane
Caulton, an NLS spokeswoman, says their demographic skews older than the
U.S. population, with most patrons 65 or older. Even as commercial
audiobooks surge in popularity, the program's recordings remain
bare-bones affairs, with no music, no special effects and no multiple
voice actors for different parts. Caulton says the library is looking to
commercial producers for rights to future titles but adds, "I just can't
say what deals have been worked out. For decades, NLS used records and
tapes, setting its recordings apart by making its playback machines
operate at unusual speeds: 8 rpm rather than 33, for instance. Now that
the recordings are digital, they're stored on special USB thumb drives
in a rare .3gp format that most computers can't read. The
Braille-equipped plastic thumb-drive holders fit only approved machines.
But in this file-sharing era, everything eventually finds its way into
the public domain. Sure enough, Hagen's Catcher recordings have made
their way onto file-sharing sites and have developed something of a cult
following among open-source pirates who happen to be Salinger fans.
Semi-retired since 2001, Hagen has read books out loud since 1973 for
NLS, working from a basement studio at the end of a long labyrinth of
stairways and gunmetal steel bookshelves in Washington. The studio turns
out about 100 audiobooks a year, part of a larger system of library
studios across the USA that produces about 2,000 recordings in all. On a
recent winter afternoon, Hagen and a producer sat facing one another
through the glass of a soundproof booth as he put the finishing touches
on a recording of It Gets Better, a 2011 anthology of writing for gay
teens. Since beginning the recording last fall, Hagen had checked the
pronunciation of each of the book's 100 or so contributors. He realized
he had gotten a few wrong and was painstakingly rerecording the authors'
names. We're fiends -- fiends -- on pronunciation," he says. Correct
pronunciation for an audiobook is the same as correct spelling for a
print book. Hagen's preoccupation even resulted in a hobby that became
something of an obsession. He began keeping track of names with a little
box of 3x5-inch cards. One box grew to seven, eight, then nine. In 1990,
the library finally began digitizing the collection. The list -- dubbed
Say How? -- now resides on the library's website and is one of its most
visited pages. Hagen still updates it from time to time -- watching TV,
he'll notice an unusual pronunciation and jot it down. MSNBC personality
Rachel Maddow, for instance, pronounces her own name "MA-doh," but
everyone else seems to pronounce it "MA-dow. Asked how a 63-year-old
could channel the emotions of Catcher's 16-year-old protagonist, Hagen
brushes off the question. He was a disenfranchised teenager -- so was I.
And I remembered those years really, really well. Hagen can't remember
whether he recorded Salinger's classic Nine Stories collection, but he
remembers recording Franny and Zooey. Oh, and it's "ZOO-ee," he says,
not ZO-ee.



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with disabilities. Equal Opportunity Employer/Program

Joey Couch
phone 606-216-8033.
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