Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from November, 2024

The Talking Book Library

[This column was first published in the Sopris Sun on November 20, 2024.] Once I volunteered at a radio station. I read the daily newspaper for the blind. I wasn’t particularly good at it. I recorded at 6am and quickly learned that I need to be on the other side of at least two cups of coffee before I can talk. One time, I ended my two-hour session with the discovery that I forgot to hit the record button. The radio station had a lot of followers, but they were gently amused by my flub. (And now … Yesterday’s news?) Years later I moved to Colorado and wound up taking a tour of the Colorado Talking Book Library (CTBL) in Denver. A department of the Colorado State Library, part of the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (a program of the even larger Library of Congress), the Talking Book Library can be found in every state. Its history traces back almost 100 years. It is a magnificent institution. Who do they serve? Millions. It’s easy enough to understand the mean