Category: book Nook
I don't know how many on here use BARD for downloading books from NLS, but for those of you who do you may not be aware of something. If you check every day, like I do, to see if new books are up, you may at first be disappointed to see no new books or only magazines. But if you check back the next day, go ahead and recheck the previous date because lately they have been adding books very late, even after 5:00 p.m. So today, for example, I saw only magazine titles for January 9, but then started checking books dated January 8 and found a very long list which was not there yesterday. Then I also checked for January 7 because originally only a very short list of new books appeared on Monday, but today there were several more under that date.
Hope some of you find this information helpful.
Thanks for this. I've never used that part of the Bard, only the search for what I am looking for and then download that. Should be interesting to see how this other part works. Still holdin out for the NLS app for iPhone. And it seems they still have far fewer brf books than the audio kind.
Thanks for this, Becky. I didn't know you could check for new books, so not only did you give me some valuable info about that part, you introduced me to it in the first place.
I've always liked the recently added feature. Interesting to see what they add, and has helped me find a few books that I'd never have read otherwise.
So, is the ios app forthcoming? I'd heard rumors of it, but don't know how reliable they were.
Man, if they'd come up with an IOS app, I'd be one happy camper.
I love the format of the new site too. I also discovered the musical instruction section. I haven't done anything with what I've downloaded but that's another story. lol
Seriously Alicia, you've never clicked on the recently added books link? That's the first thing I do when I go on the site every day. I only use one of the search features if I just want to waste some time and see if there are any authors I might like to try or books under the subject index in a certain subject that I haven't tried yet. I also like to check out the most popular downloads link every couple of weeks to see what others are downloading.
Thanks for the info on the recently added category, which, btw, is the feature I use most. I stopped looking at the most-popular. Since it never semed to change, I assumed it might be broken? LOL.
It does change a little more frequently now. THANK God Three Shades of Gray is no longer at the top.
yeah, never used that feature, always just downloaded what I needed wanted, and got out of there quick. I prefer the braille side of things though don't like the bard formats or readers much, only like 2 or 3 of them. I much prefer professionally read books. and also, I wish nls would post more textbooks, that way I don't need to buy so much. bookshare does a decent enough job at that at least! I've found some ttextbooks on there, so I find myself using that instead more often then nls, I haven't been on there for a while now, now a days I just grab whatever I need on bookshare.
Thanks for the tips guys. To the one posting about the music section, you can get a lot of Braille music on there, but it's basically your Victorian repertoire plus pop charts stuff. But since I picked up the recorder again a few years ago (not very seriously however), I've found a lot of Braille wind music not just classical but irish jigs and the like.
Since this topic has been brought back up to the top, I might as well add that often books are added on Saturdays now. Not every week, but quite often. So I check the recently added books page every day now.
The iOS app is in alpha stage now, and is in active development. I heard a demo of it on a podcast, do a search with google for Blind access Journal and it's one of the first things that'll come up, or it should be anyways.
I'm hoping they add the missing Xanth novels, notably Centaur Aisle and Krewel Lye. Those were two of my favorites.
i enjoy looking for on bard. i will look for new titles. and see what i can find. and i like looking at new subjects too. to learn.books.
Centaur Isle and Cruel Lie are classic Xanth; I got them on cassette, which prompts the question, "How do they decide what to reissue from cassette to digital"?
I think how they decide what to reissue must depend, at least in part, on the quality of the master tape. I have listened to a few of the older books that have been converted, and I could hear the hissing of the tape even though it wasn't actually the tape I was listening to. So I imagine if the master tape is in really bad shape, they don't bother converting it. But that's just my guess.
Wouldn't it be cool if they'd hire a bunch of us to convert the tapes to the DTB format? I can't imagine that it would be that hard to learn how to do, maybe a week or so of training, free matter shipping, and voila, home based employment for a crap-ton of us.
As for how they choose what, who knows. It seems to be very random.
I wish they'd be more consistent about markers witin a book though.It's very annoying to get a book and then, because it contains just the marker at the beginning, to not be able to easily skip back to a prior section if you should happen to fall asleep while listening.
I think they mark up new books. But when converting old books from cassette to digital, there must not be any way to mark them up.
I have a new book that is not marked up at all; whole thing is one huge chapter...
That's not entirely true. I've gotten marked up books that were converted from tape.
Yep, the bookmark button and I have had to become fast friends. lol
I use the book marker a lot too for that same reason. Falling asleep. I hate having a book with no markers for each chapter. i have found that most converted books don't have them but a few might.
I have noticed that the downloading has gotten a lot faster for me. Use to it took a long while to down load anything. But now it is faster. Maybe something to do with new internet. But it is super fast on my mac. I can download 10 books all at once and not have to pause because my mac is that quick with them and by the time I get to the tenth, it is finished with the first five or so...
OK, I was just guessing. I am not a representative or spokesperson for NLS. However, there are ways to change things and make suggestions, so instead of whining about things you all don't like, why not try checking out the help link on the BARD site to get answers to frequently asked questions or join the BARD talk email list where you will be amongst some first class whiners and feel right at home, and perhaps some of the people who are on that list and either work for NLS or know people who do will be able to address your complaints. Join this list by sending a blank email to bardtalk-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
And for those of you who don't like joining lists, try the website www.bardtalk.com. There are some useful links there. Finding out who to contact when you want to make changes or ask questions is a lot more useful than complaining here on the zone.
ya i like the most reesently added books feature theres another cool feature you can find books you've resently downloaded wich is cool as well
ya that would be cool to make all the books in to digital but some of us wuld have to read them wouldn't we?
i like the recently added books feature also. In fact I check it almost every day. :)
Yeah, there doesn't seem to be any pattern anymore to when they add books. I even look on Saturdays and Sundays now because, surprisingly, sometimes books are added on those days. I also always go back and look at the previous day in case they added books very late and I didn't catch them the first time.
You're right Blue--may I call you Blue? *smile*
Today, which is Saturday, there are seven books newly added.
I depend on mail discussion groups to tell me about books I might have missed.
There are three book discussion groups which I keep up with pretty regularly. I'll be back with joining instructions when I've had time to put it all together.
The first is db-review. This group is strictly for reviews of books on bard. The big chiefs of this group regulate it faithfully, but most reviews are great. You just can't stray too far off topic.
The second group is called ReadingOurWay. It's pretty loosely monitored, but gives some pretty good reviews from almost anywhere: a lot are from folks reading books on audible.com or kindel.
The last group is not monitored at all, as far as I can tell. It's called BardTalk, and, I guess, is supposed to be bard related. I float in and out of this group, staying subscribed until the subjects or number of emails drive me away.
Like I said, I'll be back with subscribing instructions later.
Bob
thanks bob! I need to get back on baard it is just I haven't found any thing that's grabbed my attension.
Okay, I almost forgot that I promised subscribing info about mailing lists that might be helpful.
Well, here it is.
db-review is a list where books on the bard site are reviewed (braille or audio). To subscribe to the list, send a message to
db-review-subscribe@emissives.com
ReadingOurWay is a group that discusses books from anywhere, bookshare, audible or bard.
to subscribe, send a message to
ReadingOurWay-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
BardTalk is a group that talks about everything. Boy do they talk!
to join this list, send a blank email to the following email address:
bardtalk-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
You'll receive a confirmation message, and you simply need to reply without entering any comments.
Their site at http://www.bardtalk.com/ has a wealth of information about bard and books and bard hardware.
Bob
Ya i like checking the newist books to I wait till about 11 p.m. cause i think they are up around that time.
I've noticed recently that they've been adding books even on Sundays. They've been adding books on Saturdays for awhile now. And even on holidays we've gotten books recently. Last week there were books on Christmas day, and there were also books added on Thanksgiving. I'm not sure how they do that, it must be something in the programming. But I tend to look every day now.
Thanks, I'll start looking more often.