Talking Times, Spring 2024 - Section 3

A New BARD Experience Is Coming This Year

BARD—the NLS Braille and Audio Reading Download online service—launched on April 30, 2009, with over 15,000 digital audiobooks and nearly 1,000 issues of 40 audio magazines. (eBraille books and magazines have already been available for ten years on NLS’s Web-Braille service, which combined with BARD in 2013.) Within three months, 6,853 patrons had signed up for BARD. Today, more than 170,000 audio and braille books and magazines are available on BARD, and the service has more than 44,000 users. And now NLS is preparing to roll out a major update: BARD 2.0. “It’s going to be a new BARD experience,” says Don Olson, NLS Customer Service Specialist. You’ll be hearing more this summer about the BARD 2.0 launch. Here are a few of the new features: Finding books will be easier than ever before, with a more robust search engine and the ability to perform advanced searches to look through the NLS catalog, including the world’s largest collection of braille music scores. Patrons will be able to search through Recently Added Books and Magazines, Most Popular Downloads, and their Wish Lists and refine the results by format, language, and subject. The Wish List, Reading History, Subscriptions, and Account Settings will be reorganized under one menu. Patrons will be given the option to disable their Reading History tracking—which will enhance privacy. Patrons’ reading history will remain in the system for 30 days after they turn off tracking in case they change their minds, but after that it will be permanently deleted.

NLS Has Released BARD Mobile iOS version 2.2.2

Members should go to the App Store. The enhancements included in this version are Siri shortcuts (voice user interface). The app can now be operated by voice commands for playback and navigation, including stopping and resuming playback, fast-forwarding and rewinding by various intervals, and setting a sleep timer or a bookmark. Users can add Siri shortcuts in the app’s sett ings. With International language search, set up to four languages in the app's settings and then filter search results by selecting a preferred language. Color contrast is boosted between selected and unselected search categories for accessibility improvements for visually impaired users. This update enhances visibility with Smart Invert, Classic Invert, and Dark Mode on. Multiword search for Search and Search music Bug fixes, including Garbled credentials error fixed; Switch from tone to speed is fixed on iOS 17; Get Books and Bookshelf now return only titles matching the type selected in the Show Me setting, i.e., Audio Only / Braille Only / Both Audio and Braille. The app supports iOS versions 14 through 17.

New Braille and Audio Reading Download (BARD) Accounts

If you have recently signed up for a BARD account, please make sure that you log in for the first time on a laptop or desktop computer before trying to log in on a mobile device. If you have problems downloading, contact the Talking Books Library staff or email NLS Tech Support at NLSDownload@loc.gov.

Additional Technology Updates

NLS completed field testing of an Alexa Skill called My Talking Books that allows users, via voice commands, to connect with BARD, search the collection, and stream books. NLS also completed a field test of the DA-2, the next generation of the digital audiobook player, which will allow connections to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices and provide storage for saving content on the device. Watch for more updates in the Talking Books Blog and in our bi-annual newsletters and have a GREAT SUMMER!!