Talking Books

The mission of the Kansas Talking Book Service is to provide books and magazines in braille and recorded format and playback equipment to any Kansas Citizen unable to use standard print because of a visual or physical impairment.

The service, coordinated through the State Library of Kansas and the Library of Congress, National Library Service, provides for free home delivery of library resources designed to meet the cultural and recreational needs of eligible patrons by providing a well-rounded leisure-reading collections, equipment adapted to the reader’s needs and helpful responses to requests for information.

Persons who are unable to read or use standard printed materials due to blindness, low vision, missing arms or hands, lack of muscle coordination, prolonged weakness, or physically based reading disabilities (such as dyslexia) are eligible to use the service. An application signed by a certifying agent is required. You can get an application online at http://skyways.lib.ks.us/KSL/talking/ or at the library.

When a person enters the program they are sent a special player that is easy to use and will play the specially formatted tapes. The tapes will not play on a regular cassette player. Digital book players and cartridges will be coming in the near future. Descriptive videotapes are available. Descriptive videos are movies and television programs enhanced with narration that describes the actions, settings, gestures, and other key visual elements. A variety of popular free recorded and Braille magazines are also available.

Books are sent postage free, through regular U.S. mail, and are returned in the same manner. All have pre-addressed postage free mailing cards for easy return.

The Kansas Talking Book collection (more than 50,000 titles)contains a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction titles for adults and children, including best-sellers, mysteries, romance, biographies, christian fiction, science fiction, poetry, humor, westerns and suspense.A complete searchable list of available titles in Kansas is available at www.klas.com/kstb. The KLAS system allows registered users the ease of searching, determining availability and reserving the materials they want to read. Registered patrons also receive a list of recent releases (Talking Book Topics) and genre catalogs to aid in their selection. Patrons may request items found in these resources or titles recommended in newsletters simply by going on-line using KLAS in Kansas, calling Jaime Prideaux at the Southeast Kansas Library System 1-800- 279-3219 or emailing jprideaux@sekls.org.
If requested, the Talking Books library staff will automatically select titles by genre, such as biographies or poetry. They also provides Readers Advisory Service that will be happy to provide suggestions.

Because reading is more than a visual experience