The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) hosted their biennial conference in San Francisco last week and thanks to the Indiana State Library Foundation, the Indiana Talking Book and Braille Library was on hand. There are many exciting developments on the way for both patrons and NLS libraries around the country, including ambitious plans for book delivery through the cloud (though this is many years away). Some things happening in the more immediate future include:

That All May Read—NLS has launched their new media campaign, That All May Read, as well as a newly designed logo. Librarians around the country voted on the campaign slogan and the consensus was to stick with the historic “That All May Read” slogan. Upcoming promotion plans include the creation of an NLS television commercial, which will be their first foray into that medium. Their campaign depends on people who know about the service to help spread the word, which you can do so by liking their Facebook page and sharing their information.

BARD Media Manager—BARD Media Manager will drastically improve the user experience of patrons using BARD on their home PCs. It will remember your BARD password and log you in automatically each time you use the system. It will also have the ability to download multiple books at a time, unzip them automatically, and transfer them to your storage device. The BARD media manager should be available for patrons to download sometime in the summer.

New Search Engine for BARD—The long awaited new search engine for BARD will be more modern and will produce more relevant results for patrons based on the NLS catalog.

Success of Commercial Titles—By including commercial titles in the NLS collection, patrons now have access to over 1000 more books per year than they did before. NLS has the ability to add these commercial titles to BARD within weeks of their initial release, lessening the wait time for hot new releases. These books are still unrated though, so patrons should keep that in mind when ordering commercial audio books.

To read more about these and other exciting changes coming to the Talking Book library, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter, which you can do by clicking “subscribe for e-mail updates” on our homepage.