This summer, the Indiana Talking Book and Braille Library will be changing its service model from the current practice of sending patrons one book on one cartridge to Duplication on Demand, which will involve cartridges customized specifically for you with multiple books on each one. The new service will involve the same player and cartridges that we are currently using, but the cartridges will have more books on each one. Your cartridges will continue to come in the same type of container, but the mail card will be foldable and will contain a list of books on the cartridge. When you are ready to return a cartridge, you can throw away the mail card and book list; there is an address sticker on each container that will get your book back to us.

There are many benefits to this change. Currently, our audiobook collection contains thousands of older titles that are only available to download from BARD; these books will now be as readily available to you as new books are. In addition, you’ll now have access to new books faster and will never have to be on a wait list for a popular title. If patrons return their cartridges as they finish them, this will also help with slower mail times.

To access the titles on your DoD cartridges you can either use the player’s bookshelf mode or the sequential play feature. There are instructions for both options below.

While we were initially scheduled to make this transition in April, we now expect it to be delayed a month or two. Please contact us at 1-800-622-4970 if you would like to be among the first patrons to try it.

Sequential Play and Bookshelf
When you have a cartridge with multiple books on it, there are two ways to access the books: sequential play and bookshelf mode. Sequential play will play your books in the order they have been loaded on the cartridge, bookshelf mode lets you pick what book you want to listen to. To use sequential play, you will need to have the latest version of software for your player; it will install automatically when you play your first DoD cartridge. Or you can install it now by downloading it directly from NLS.

To use the sequential play feature, you put your cartridge in and listen to the first book as usual. At the end of the book, let the closing announcements play; when they are finished a voice will say “end of book, press play/stop to go to the next book”. Press the play/stop button and the next book on the cartridge will begin playing. Repeat this step until you have listened to all of the books.

To use bookshelf, turn your player on and put the cartridge in. Next, hold down the green “play/stop” button for ten seconds, or until your player beeps and says “bookshelf mode.” Once in bookshelf mode, you can use the fast forward and rewind buttons to scroll through the books or magazines recorded on the cartridge. When you have located the item you wish to read, press the green play/stop button again and it will start to play. Repeat the process for each item on the cartridge.

This blog post was written by Maggie Ansty of the Indiana Talking Book and Braille Library.