By Catherine A. Durivage, Library Program Director

Minnesota Braille and Talking Book Library

(Editor’s Note: This presentation was given at the National Federation of the Blind of Minnesota annual convention on November 3, 2007.)

Thank you for extending an invitation to me to speak at your annual conference this year. It is my pleasure to come here today and let you know what is happening at the library.

Legislative Session

Thank you for all your efforts this past legislative session to help secure additional staff for the Library. I want to particularly thank Steve Jacobson and Jennifer Dunnam and everyone else that met with legislators in February on our behalf. I am happy to report that we will be hiring another staff person and are working on getting a second position filled. We will be hiring a Customer Service Specialist. The person in this position answers the telephone and assists patrons with book selections. The second position we hope to fill will be for a librarian that will be responsible for our webpage, assistive technology, and the transition to digital among other duties. While this does not bring us to the staffing levels we were at 2 years ago it is a step in the right direction and we are thankful for all your efforts.

Name Change

As some of you know, the library changed its name recently. We are now the Minnesota Braille and Talking Book Library. In 2005 the Minnesota Legislature passed a law requiring state agencies to remove archaic or outdated language referring to people with certain disabilities. The statute identified the term “handicapped” as an outdated term, thus requiring the library to change its name. We sent a ballot in our last newsletter and over 640 were returned. By a margin of 2 to 1 the name Minnesota Braille and Talking Book Library was selected over Minnesota Library for the Blind and Print Disabled and any other write-ins. We are in the process of updating our printed materials so for awhile you still may come across materials with our old name on them.

Advisory Committee

Our Advisory Committee was reactivated this past year and we now have a full committee of five members. They are: Craig Anderson of Saint Paul, Juliette Silvers of Minneapolis, Duane Roemhildt of Faribault, Jane Toleno of Big Lake and Adrienne Haugen of Olivia.

Committee terms are for four years. While we have a full committee now, if interested in serving, when future openings occur, please contact me. There is an application process and the Commissioner of Education appoints the members.

The purpose of the committee is to “advise the Minnesota Braille and Talking Book Library (MBTBL) on long range plans and library services. Quality library service requires consumer support and cooperation among all types of organizations. To fulfill its responsibilities the Advisory Committee shall consider the needs of all MBTBL consumers and shall assist in communicating the goals, plans, and policies to government officials and library consumers.” (MBTBL Bylaws, revised 9/10/07).

This committee is in its infancy right now and one of my goals for the committee for the upcoming year is to have it set its long-range plans and goals.

Library Building

The library building has undergone some construction recently. The roof of the library was replaced this summer, with work finally completed last month. We had leakage in our main public space and it was critical that the roof be replaced sooner rather than later. The entire roof of the building including the roof over the new addition was replaced.

Statistics

I recently completed annual statistics for the National Library Service. We have to submit patron and circulation figures twice a year to NLS. Their statistics are based on the federal fiscal year. This past federal fiscal year ending September 30, 2007 showed a slight decrease in the number of registered patrons when compared to the previous fiscal year. The difference was around 2%. We have over 11,231 registered patrons. In terms of circulation, we experienced less than a 3% decline in cassette circulation but braille declined less than 1% from FFY06 to FFY07. We have 485 individual braille readers and between individuals and organizations over 5,405 braille titles circulated in FFY07. Overall cassette circulation was almost 296,000 titles.

We did see an increase in descriptive video circulation and the Playaways, the self-playing digital talking books continue to be popular. We have more titles coming in our Playaway collection. If you count all book, magazines and catalogs we send out we actually experience a 2.5% increase in circulation figures. We are a busy group!

NLS Digital Transition

I know many of you are anxiously waiting for the new talking books and digital players. NLS is still on track to introduce their new format next year, but because their request for funding in Congress is not yet finalized and is less than they need, the overall transition time from cassettes to digital may take longer than initially projected. Unfortunately, this will mean there may be even fewer new digital players available to each state initially. In Minnesota, our allocation of new digital players stands at 784. By law, veterans will receive first dibs on the new players. After that, they will be offered to people 100 years old or older. From there each state will decide who will receive the remaining players. The library and the Communication Center are working together to come up with a loaning policy. In the meantime, if you are interested in receiving the new player and want your name added to the waiting list, please contact the library. This is also true if you are a veteran and want to be sure this information is noted in our records.

We plan to devote an upcoming newsletter to the digital transition, so stay tuned.

But, in the meantime, NLS has opened up their digital downloadable books pilot project, called NLS BARD: Braille and Audio Reading Download, to those patrons who have purchased or have access to the new HumanWare Victor Reader Stream. To participate in the download pilot project you must:

• Be an active patron of a cooperative network library
• Have access to a player capable of playing NLS-produced digital talking books (currently only the Victor Reader Stream)
• Have high-speed Internet service such as DSL or cable
• Have access to a computer connected to the Internet for downloading and unzipping books and/or magazines
• Have access to an active e-mail address

The website to fill out an application form to participate in this project is located at www.nlstalkingbooks.org/dtb/.

When your application is received, NLS staff will check your information against records of active library readers. If you are approved to participate you will receive an e-mail message with sign-on information. If there is a problem you will receive a message explaining the problem.

As of October 23, 2007, there were over 7,861 titles available to download, with new titles added almost every day.

So far, 13 people have registered for the downloadable project here in Minnesota. If you have questions about the pilot project, please contact us.

If you do not have access to a computer or if you are interested in trying out a digital talking book, you may want to borrow a Playaway. A Playaway is a self-contained digital talking book that was produced for the commercial market. We received a grant from State Library Services at the Minnesota Department of Education to purchase some titles and we recently purchased 100 more. Playaways run on a single triple A battery and a pair of ear buds or headphones is needed to listen to the book. The library will provide you with a pair of ear buds that are yours to keep. All you do to operate the Playaway is to plug in the ear buds, press the Power and Play button and start listening. You do not need any other equipment to listen to the book. We are in the process of updating the list of available titles in large print, braille and cassette, but you can access the updated list via our online catalog at www.klas.com/mnbph or at our website located at education.state.mn. From there, click on the link for the Minnesota Braille and Talking Book Library.

Upcoming Projects

The library received state funding to upgrade our recording equipment from analog to digital. We are in the process now of investigating options and whether or not we can replace our standalone recording booth with a room with the money allocated. We recorded in-house the Minnesota History and Minnesota Conservation Volunteer as well as books about Minnesota or by Minnesota authors. Volunteers do all the recording.

We also received funding to reprint our large print book collection catalog, record some of our in-house publications into Spanish and upgrade our assistive technology workstation. Our large print book catalog has not been reprinted since the mid-1990s and we have never had any of our in-house publications available in Spanish. Our current assistive technology workstation was installed in 1999 and has not undergone any major upgrades since then. We will have JAWS, ZoomText, Duxbury and Kurzweil 1000 software available on it. These are all very wonderful opportunities and are keeping us quite busy.

I want to close by publicly thanking the staff at the Minnesota Braille and Talking Book Library. They are the backbone of this service and they make this operation work.

I thank you again for inviting me here today. I know I can speak for the staff at the library in saying that your support of this program is greatly appreciated.