By Catherine Durivage, Director, Minnesota Braille and Talking Book Library

(Editor’s Note: This presentation was given at the Annual Convention of the National Federation of the Blind of Minnesota on November 6, 2010.)

Hello. My name is Catherine Durivage and I am the Library Director at the Minnesota Braille and Talking Book Library. Thank you for extending an invitation to me to speak at your annual conference again this year.

Over the past few years when I have come to speak to you about the library we seemed to be facing some serious budget and service challenges. While we are not out of the woods completely regarding our budget issues, we are moving forward in a more positive direction.

Towards the end of last fiscal year we received permission to retain one of our two temporary employees and hire another librarian. I am happy to report that we have filled both positions. Meghan Kern was retained as one of our two Customer Service Specialists. She has a background in literature and has been a wonderful asset to our staff. If you have called the library in recent months you probably have already spoken with her.

Last month our new librarian started. Dan Malosh was a public service librarian in Wisconsin. He brings to my team a great deal of expertise in information technology, recording, and reference services. He is currently implementing an update to our print/braille label software so we can start downloading, duplicating and labeling digital books. He will be responsible for our website and hopefully, in the future, get us back on track with our volunteer recording program.

Please know that the library staff is extremely grateful for all your telephone calls, emails and personal visits to your legislators on our behalf. Your continued support of this service means a great deal to each one of us.

At this time last year I also spoke about the transition to digital that was barely off the ground. Well, a year later and the new digital players are in the hands of close to 3,500 patrons. We have been sending letters and emails and making telephone calls to our patrons notifying them about the availability of the new players. We are now in the process of contacting individuals that may not have been as active in the past year to make sure they are aware that the new players are here. NLS ceased cassette production as of October 1, so from this point forward, no new books not already in production, will be produced on cassette. If you have not received your new player and want one, please contact us or State Services for the Blind. We are also requesting that if you have material checked out for more than six weeks, please return them so we can send these books to others who are on our waiting lists.

When you return your digital books, please make sure that

1. the correct cartridge is in the container. We have a couple dozen mixed-up book containers that have the wrong digital book inside;
2. there is a cartridge in the container. We receive about two containers every day that are empty;
3. you are returning the container with the same mailing card that the book was shipped in. The mailing card identifies what book went out to what person and we use it to check in books. It will take us longer to process a returned book without its mailing card or an incorrect mailing card. Just remember the mailing cards, cartridges and containers are not interchangeable.

We have been asked when we anticipate increasing the checkout limit for digital books. Currently the checkout limit is five digital books for six weeks. We hope to increase this number, but probably not until the end of the year or early in 2011. There will always be a cap on digital book checkouts, but it will be higher than five. We started out at two books, and then went to three and now we are at five. Our digital book collection is quite a bit smaller than our cassette collection and we do not receive as many digital copies as compared to cassettes. This is why there is currently a limit in place.

For those of you that have a computer and access to the Internet you can register to use Minnesota BARD and download additional books and magazines that can be played on the new players. You would have 24/7 access to close to 20,000 titles. We currently have almost 500 patrons registered to use Minnesota BARD and they downloaded over 23,000 books and magazines from October 1, 2000 through September 30, 2010. On average we circulate 25,000-27,000 books per month, so the BARD downloads equal about one month of our in-house circulation. We expect the number of BARD users to increase as more players get into the hands of our patrons.

We understand that NLS plans to merge Web-braille into BARD. Last we heard this was to take place yet this year. We have not had any recent updates on its progress, but we will keep you posted as we find out more information.

For more information about Minnesota BARD visit https://nlsbard.loc.gov/MN1A.

We still receive questions about keeping the cassette players. We strongly recommend keeping your cassette player since it will be awhile before our collection of digital titles will be sufficient in quantity. NLS did recently announce that they plan to convert to digital all cassette titles except for those that are obsolete in terms of content, like medical or law books, or those titles whose original analog recording is not of significant quality to convert to digital. NLS may instead re-record those titles. It will be quite a number of years before the majority of our cassette collection will be available in digital format. All retro titles produced from cassette to digital will be available to download on Minnesota BARD. It will be up to individual libraries to determine whether or not they want to produce their own copies on cartridge to mail to patrons.

We also receive a number of questions about magazines on digital. Magazines present a challenge for NLS. It is cost prohibitive to send individual magazine issues out on digital cartridges, especially when the practice has been that you didn’t have to return cassette magazines. NLS is looking at some pilot projects in the coming months regarding sending a series magazines issues out on digital cartridges. In the meantime, magazines will continue to be sent by mail on cassette. You can also download current and back issues of magazines from Minnesota BARD.

Available digital books are listed in Talking Book Topics. Digital books will have the letters DB listed before the book number. Cassette books use the prefix RC. Both cassettes and digital books will share the same book number. The prefix, DB or RC, will let you know in what format a book is available. 

NLS recently published its annual catalog of audio books. They changed its name from Cassette Books to Digital Talking Books Plus. The most recent issue is 2009. If you would like a large-print copy, let us know. It will eventually be available on a digital cartridge and on Minnesota BARD to download.

We know many of you use the Internet and email, so we are looking at ways to use things like listservs, blogs, and other technologies to keep you up-to-date on library happenings. While the main means that people contact us is by telephone, we know that other technologies exist that could be used to keep you informed.

As for the future, our biggest challenges continue to be the ongoing transition to digital and working on increasing our funding and staffing levels. I understand we continue to be in a very difficult economic time, but I believe we can meet and overcome these challenges with the support of your group.

It has been a pleasure being here today. If there is time, I entertain questions.

Thank you,

Catherine A. Durivage

Library Program Director

Minnesota Braille and Talking Book Library

Catherine.durivage@state.mn.us