This just in from NNELS…

February 1st to 7th, 2015, is White Cane Week and it’s our pleasure to announce the addition of about 1,000 downloadable DAISY books to the NNELS collection, including hundreds of titles for children and young adults.

White Cane Week was designed to “create awareness of issues that confront the blind and vision impaired community, but just as important, demonstrate to others as well as themselves, ability over disability.”

The new NNELS titles, all of which are live narrations, come from Recorded Books, an audiobook producer and distributor, which converted a large number of their audiobook titles to DAISY format. This addition of 1,000 titles complements the 2,000 more DAISY books we purchased from Recorded Books in the fall of 2014.

To browse the entire collection online, search for the words “recorded books” (no quotation marks needed) at nnels.ca. Then, use the “Filter by Genre” option to browse for the perfect book to suit your mood.

And in case you’re doubting there’s a book to suit you, we’d like present just a few selections from our varied collection. Are you interested in…

• rollicking westerns? Try Ride to Hell’s Gate, by Ralph Cotton.
• a dangerous mystery? How’s The Book of Murder for a title?
• philosophy and humour? Read the memorable Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes, by Thomas Cathcart.
• revisiting classics? Have you read The Jungle Books, by Rudyard Kipling?
• Christian fiction? You might enjoy Danny Gospel, by David Athey.
• delving into some science and history? Give a listen to Richard Feynman’s fascinating selected letters in Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track.
• sinking into a romance? Take a trip to Sunrise Point with author Robyn Carr.
• sharing books for children and young adults? You might, as we do, have fond memories of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, by Avi, and Voices, by Ursula Le Guin. Or perhaps Attack of the Mutant Underwear is more to your taste…

Let us know what you read, and please share your favourites in the NNELS forums!

We hope this announcement will be shared with fellow readers and librarians. As for some advice to librarians helping blind and visually impaired readers, one of our blind readers has this to say:

“Relax! We don’t expect you to have answers, just that you be willing to look for them and implement them when they’re found. We know about blindness; you know about libraries. Let’s both enjoy learning something new.”

Questions about NNELS are always welcome. Thank you for sharing this information with the people who can use it.