Texas Talking Book News, Winter 2016 Page: Texas Talking Book News

                                
Texas Talking Book News
Texas State Library and Archives Commission  Winter 2016
Talking Book
Program
Director's Report
Greetings! Here is the latest news:
Death of a narrator: Sadly, one of the great narrators of NLS books
recently passed away. Roy Avers died, at his home in Indiana on November
13, 2015 at the age of 83. Mr. Avers began his narration career with the
American Printing House for the Blind (APH) in 1971 and eventually
narrated over 1,750 books for the National Library Service for the Blind and
Physically Handicapped (NLS). He became APH's first winner of the
Alexander Scourby Award in 1990. For a more complete write-up on Mr.
Avers, including a list of some of the books he has narrated, see Laura
Jean's blog post at
https://www.tsl.texas.gov/texastalkingbooks/?p=2055.
Update on the new automation system: The project continues to move
forward. User interface frames are being developed by the vendor; staff
preview and give comments on how these frames will make the new system
look and operate. Work is going forward on the new online catalog that
patrons will use to search and order books.. Staff is considering bid
proposals for new printers that'will produce the mailing cards for books and
equipment. Work is going forward on setting up the servers in the state's
remote consolidated data center. Discussions have begun on the
bibliographic data that will be moved from the old system to the new and
how that data will be sorted and then indexed for use. The project is still on
schedule to begin some staff testing as early as April 2016.
Spring cleaning: We periodically have to reconcile our inventory records.
The time to do this with our machines is coming up in the spring. If you
have an older machine-especially the yellow cassette player or one of the
record players-that you are no longer using', please return it to us so that

we can mark it off the inventory. These older machines are still federal
property,.and we are still held accountable for them on our inventories.
Please be sure that you are using the correct address when returning a
machine. The address is 4400B Shoal Creek Blvd., Austin, TX 78756;