Volume
XXXVIII No. 1
Spring
2015
Mark
your Calendars for the 2015 Indiana Vision Expo
The
2015 Indiana Vision Expo will be held on Saturday, September 26th
from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the Indiana State Library. Vision Expo provides an opportunity for
people with vision loss, their friends, families, and service providers to
learn about the resources available that help promote independent living. It is also a great opportunity to meet the
Talking Book staff as well as fellow Talking Book patrons. Parking and
admission are free of charge.
The
keynote speaker for this year’s event is Kathy Nimmer, Indiana Teacher of the
Year and long time Talking Book Patron. In addition to
teaching English at Harrison High School in West Lafayette, Kathy is a
published author whose works include Two Plus Four Equals One: Celebrating the Partnership of People
with Disabilities and Their Assistance Dogs (DB74137). Read more about Kathy being honored as
Indiana’s teacher of the year at www.doe.in.gov/TOY.
Visit the Vision Expo website at http://indianavisionexpo.library.in.gov/ for
details about this year’s event as they become available.
Summer
Reading
The library will be hosting its annual summer reading
program from June 1st to August 3rd. This year we will be
focusing on super hero themes with “Every Hero has a Story” for ages 4-13 and
“Unmask!” for ages 14-18. Any Braille, digital audio,
or large print book borrowed from the library within the time frame will count
toward a participant’s total. In addition to borrowing physical copies of
books, participants can download digital audio books from the BARD website at http://nlsbard.loc.gov and
play them on their talking book player, or download them directly to an iPad,
iPhone, or iPod Touch using the BARD Mobile app, available from the iTunes app
store. The app should also be available for Android devices by the beginning of
June. Students with refreshable Braille displays can also download Braille
books through either the app or the website. To learn more about BARD and BARD
Mobile, please visit http://in.gov/library/3811.htm.
Prizes will be awarded based on number of books
read. All books borrowed from the
library must be returned before prizes can be awarded. Anyone between the ages of 4 and 18 who is
unable to read standard print due to a visual impairment, physical disability,
or organic reading disability is eligible for the summer reading program.
Applications will be mailed in May to all active eligible patrons.
Please direct any questions regarding the summer reading
program to Laura Williams at lawilliams1@library.in.gov or
317-232-0609/1-800-622-4970.
Out
of the Office: June 9th-11th
In June, the Indiana Talking Book and Braille Library is hosting Talking Book librarians from around the country
for our annual conference. As a result, Talking Book staff will be unable to
take your phone calls from June 9-11th so that everyone can take
advantage of this unique professional development experience.
Your regular Talking Book service should not be impacted
during the conference. Please make use of voice mails and emails, which we will
check regularly, in order to make specific book requests.
News
Tidbits
·
Loan periods for audio magazines have been
extended so patrons will now have more time to enjoy their publications. The
loan period for weekly magazines is now three weeks (up from one week), while
the loan period for monthly magazines is now seven weeks (up from four weeks).
·
Our usual supply of Braille calendars arrived
late this year so we were unable to offer them in the December newsletter.
However, if you would still like a 2015 Braille calendar we do still have some
available. Please call or email us to let us know if you are interested in
receiving one of these.
·
NLS has entered the final phase of
development for the BARD Mobile app for Android devices. They are hoping to
have the final app approved and added to the Android app store within the next
couple of months.
·
Patrons still wishing to order a free
currency reader from the Bureau of Printing and Engraving must now do so by
contacting BEP directly for an application. Patrons can download applications
at www.moneyfactory.gov/uscurrencyreaderform.html or by calling
1-844-815-9388.
Indiana
Voices Now on BARD
Good news for patrons who download their books from BARD!
Locally recorded books from the Indiana Voices recording program are now
available to download. While we have been eagerly anticipating the day when we
could start adding our locally recorded books to BARD for several years now, we
first had to go through a pilot process so that we could fulfill all of the
required criteria.
We were invited to participate in the BARD pilot program
in November and completed it in January.
Early in February we uploaded Brewster’s
Millions, by Indiana author George Barr McCutcheon, to BARD. In its first
month on BARD it was downloaded over 200 times by people all over the country!
Over the next few months we will be working on making the
necessary formatting changes to more books in the Indiana Voices collection so
they too can be added and freely enjoyed by Talking Book patrons nationwide.
Upcoming Indiana titles to look for on BARD include biographies of Richard
Lugar and Frank O’Bannon as well as the classic Indiana novel Uncle Tom Andy Bill. If you are unable
to download books, physical copies of all Indiana Voices titles will always be available
to borrow from the library.
Book
Recommendations
Hot off the presses! Here are some highlights from our
newest batch of arrivals here at the library.
Maeve’s
Times: In Her Own Words by
Maeve Binchy (DB80289, LP019573)
Five decades of selected writings from the Irish Times by
the bestselling novelist, self-described as "obsessively interested in
what some might consider the trivia of other people's lives." Topics
include the royal wedding, boring airplane companions, Samuel Beckett, Margaret
Thatcher, senior moments, and life as a waitress.
The
Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
(DB80095)
Seventy-seven-year-old Dorrigo
Evans thinks back on his life and relives his time in a Japanese POW camp,
where he served as a surgeon, trying to save fellow prisoners from injury and
cholera. Strong language, some violence, and some
descriptions of sex. Man Booker Prize.
Somewhere
Safe with Somebody Good by Jan Karon
(DB80106, BR20614)
In retirement, Father Tim searches for something to
occupy his time, while wife Cynthia continues with her career as a children's
book author. Turning down a chance to run his former parish, he does take over
the local bookstore when the owner is in need.
The
Golem of Hollywood by Jonathan Kellerman
(DB80073)
Waking up beside a beautiful woman he has no memory of
meeting, Detective Jacob Lev investigates a Hollywood Division murder case
involving a severed head, an ominous message in Hebrew and the legend of the
Golem of Prague. Violence, strong language, and some
descriptions of sex.
I’ll
Have What She’s Having: My Adventures in Celebrity Dieting by
Rebecca Harrington (DB80412)
Harrington describes, undertakes, and evaluates a variety
of diets and nutritional plans endorsed by celebrities throughout the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries. Examines diets touted by Beyoncé,
Karl Lagerfeld, Greta Garbo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Victoria
Beckham, and Sophia Loren, among others.
The
Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941-1942 by Nigel Hamilton
(DB80012)
Biographer examines the development of America's military
efforts in World War II under the command of President Franklin D. Roosevelt
during the first two years of engagement in the conflict. Considers
Roosevelt's administrative personality, appointments to leadership, and
strategic alliances with Stalin and Churchill.
The
Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman
(DB79060)
1913. Malka Bialystoker
helps her father trick her mother into emigrating to
America to flee the Russian pogroms. There, Malka's
father abandons them, her mother goes insane, and Malka
is critically injured. Taken in by the Dinello
family, she grows first to love and then to hate them.
Volunteer
Appreciation
As April is National Volunteer Month, it is a great
opportunity for us to recognize the important work our volunteers do for the
Talking Book program. We have two very dedicated groups of volunteers who lend
their time and talents to the Talking Books program: one group that repairs
players for us and another that helps the Indiana Voices program record and
edit talking books.
The Fort Wayne Elfuns, a group
of retired GE employees, is our volunteer machine repair group. They inspect
and repair all of the talking book players that are returned to the library
with problems. They have done a great job keeping us stocked with a supply of refurbished,
running cassette players and an even better job of helping us fix the recent
battery issues with the digital players. If you receive a talking book player
in the mail, it has probably been worked on by the Fort Wayne Elfuns!
The Indiana Voices program also relies heavily on the
dedicated work of volunteers for both the recording and editing of all of the
books it produces. Many of our volunteers have been with us for a number of
years; some of their voices may be familiar to you from the books they have
narrated over the years while some of them work behind the scenes with very
little recognition.
Volunteers for the Indiana Voices program perform two
main jobs: narrators and reviewers. Our volunteer narrators come in once a week
and spend approximately an hour recording. Our virtual volunteer reviewers work
from home listening to the roughly edited books in order to catch mistakes. We
also have one volunteer who works onsite as a studio monitor, running the
recording session of a volunteer narrator.
The volunteers in the Indiana Voices program are
essential to the success of the program. Since the Indiana Voices program
began, our volunteers have helped us produce over 100 Indiana related books
that otherwise would not be available to our patrons. The work of all of our
volunteers is invaluable and we want to take the opportunity to recognize and
thank them for their work.
Indiana
Voices Narrator Profiles:
In an effort to provide some insight into the background
of our narrators we have asked them to give a short biography on who they are
and why they have chosen to volunteer for the Indiana Voices program. We hope
to be able to share a few of these profiles in upcoming issues of Indiana
Insights.
Name
: Carl Henn
Age: 93
Current
or Previous Occupations:
Indianapolis Times, 1948 -1965, reporter, feature writer, copy editor ;
Eli Lilly & Co., 1966 -1968, media and public relations ; Indiana Chamber
of Commerce, 1968 -1988, communications director ; Philharmonic Orchestra of
Indianapolis, 1948 – 1988, manager , presently executive producer
(non-salaried)
Number
of years as a narrator: 35 (Indiana Historical Society &
Indiana Voices)
Favorite
types of books to read / narrate: Certain types of fiction (i.e. George Ade,
Fables in Slang) ; highly informative (The Old
Northwest)
Reasons
for volunteering with Indiana Voices: Fulfilling an obvious need, making use of my
capability
Name: Richard Remien
Age: 76
Current
or Previous Occupations:
Vice-president—sales and marketing for a sporting goods manufacturer
Number
of years as a narrator:
5
Favorite
types of books to read / narrate: Sports, Biographies, Drama
Reasons
for volunteering with Indiana Voices: Enjoy reading and have time because of
retirement. It’s a worthwhile project.
____________________________________________________________
Indiana Insights is a
publication of the Talking Book and Braille Library, Indiana State
Library. Indiana Insights is also available online, in Braille, or on a
digital cartridge upon request. Any mention of products and
services in the Indiana Insights newsletter
is for information purposes only and does not
imply endorsement. This project is
funded in part with a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services
which administers the Library Services Technology act.
Indiana
Talking Book and Braille Library Calendar:
Saturday May 2, 2015 Library Closed
Tuesday May 5, 2015 Library Closed
Saturday May 23, 2015 Library Closed
Monday May 25, 2015 Library Closed
Friday July 3, 2015 Library Closed
Saturday July 4, 2015 Library Closed
Saturday September 5, 2015 Library Closed
Monday September 7, 2015 Library Closed
Saturday September 26, 2015 Vision Expo
Monday October 12, 2015 Library Closed
Tuesday November 3, 2015 Library Closed
Wednesday November 11, 2015 Library Closed
Thursday November 26, 2015 Library Closed
Friday November 27, 2015 Library Closed
Saturday November 28, 2015 Library Closed
Thursday December 24, 2015 Library
Closed
Friday December 25, 2015 Library Closed
Saturday December 26, 2015 Library Closed
Indiana Talking Book and Braille Library
Hours:
Monday
– Friday 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Saturday 8:00
a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
__________________________________________________________