News from IAAIS

Minnesota Radio Talking Book goes DAISY

The Minnesota Radio Talking Book became the world's first radio reading service in 1969, and is now first again in adopting DAISY recording. DAISY stands for Digital Accessible Information SYstem, and is an international standard originated in May 1996 by the DAISY Consortium, a collaboration of organizations formed to lead the transition from analog to Digital Talking Books.

A DAISY book can be explained as a set of digital files that includes:
1. One or more digital audio files containing a human narration of part or all of the source text;
2. A marked-up file containing some or all of the text (strictly speaking, this marked-up text file is optional);
3. A synchronization file to relate markings in the text file with time points in the audio file; and
4. A navigation control file, which enables the user to move smoothly between files while synchronization between text and audio is maintained.

The DAISY Standard allows the producing agency full flexibility regarding the mix of text and audio ranging from audio-only, to full text and audio, to text-only.

The decision to record books in a DAISY format stemmed from a combination of events. First, the Communication Center - of which the Radio Talking Book (RTB) is a part - went through a major fundraising effort in the 1990s to raise money to upgrade and digitize our entire system, from the production of braille and educational texts to the radio itself. Since the Library of Congress transitioning to using DAISY, RTB wanted the textbooks they produced to be as useful as possible. Then, in 2002, when RTB experienced a funding shortfall and the loss of a few jobs, they partnered with the Minnesota network library for the Library of Congress, arranging that RTB would duplicate their books, and the Library of Congress would distribute them. Since we wanted to be as competitive (in a good sense) as Library of Congress, we decided the Radio Talking Books needed to be recorded in DAISY format.

It has not been a seamless transition. Our volunteers were very skilled with recording on tape, and some of the volunteers have resisted learning new technology. Now many have embraced it.
But the recording of materials in DAISY format only works when there is precision on the part of the person marking the text. In the past, one volunteer worked on each book. Now several volunteers work on each book. The first couple of volunteers do no recording. They structure the book in the computer so the computer knows how many chapters or sections there are in the book and what their correspondence to the pages are to be. Then, it is up to the volunteer recording the book to put in the precise markers that correspond to the pages and elements of the book.

Problems? Of course. The most common offense is that volunteers, used to a more casual approach with recording on tape, tend to slip into imprecision that makes the recording - though still perfectly usable for air - not precise enough for a DAISY recording. For example, the ideal is that a digital page will start with the first full sentence of the page. Some volunteers new to DAISY recording will hit the page indicator in the middle of a word as the sentence continues onto the next page. Or, having forgotten to hit the page indicator, will hit it half-way down the page. This is a matter of training and experience. However, precision is absolutely necessary for a successful DAISY book.

Following are words taken from the DAISY website, explaining more of the background of DAISY recording and the DAISY consortium:
"Members of the Consortium actively promote the DAISY Standard for Digital Talking Books because it promises to revolutionize the reading experience for people who have reading disabilities. Specifically, the Consortium's vision is that all published information is available to people with print disabilities, at the same time and at no greater cost, in an accessible, feature-rich, navigable format.

"The first DAISY Standard was proprietary, originating in Sweden in 1994. The idea was to use digital recording and introduce some document structuring that would allow easy navigation by the user. In its short history, the DAISY Specification has evolved considerably. It has already begun to offer a more flexible and pleasant reading experience for people who are blind or print disabled in a number of countries including Sweden, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

"In 1997, the DAISY Consortium decided to adopt open standards based on file formats being developed for the Internet. The DAISY 2.0 Specification was released in 1998, and the 2.02 recommendation was approved in February 2001. Release of DAISY 3, the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 2002 Standard, was official in March 2002. This Standard was jointly developed by the DAISY Consortium, The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (part of the Library of Congress), and a variety of other organizations in North America. Plans are underway for the development of the supporting materials necessary to promote the Standard."

-Stuart Holland