Sightlines from Central Rappahannock Regional Library
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What’s New in Access Services?
Happy 2020 everyone! We hope your winter holiday and New Year celebrations went well. Access Services is proud to announce that our website has been updated! You can give it a spin, and learn more about Talking Books and other services and programs we offer at Central Rappahannock Regional Library (CRRL), at
librarypoint.org/access-services.
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IdeaSpace: Making+Media Opening This Spring
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CRRL will soon be extending our MakerLabs with a brand new location,
IdeaSpace! Located at 1616 Princess Anne Street in Fredericksburg, IdeaSpace will feature a recording studio, 3D printers, and a laser cutter. CRRL card holders will also be able to borrow technology for their own creative projects.
This project was made possible by the generous support of the Fredericksburg Economic Development Authority and the Fredericksburg Cable Commision. IdeaSpace will be part of the growing Canal Quarter Creative Maker District in downtown Fredericksburg.
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Meet Access Services Assistant Katie Neal
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Katie has been with CRRL for four years, starting as a volunteer with Interlibrary Loans. Within a few short months, she was hired as the Access Services Assistant. For any request that comes in, whether it be by email or phone, Katie processes the reading material and sends it out to the customer. She especially enjoys sending customers the books she knows they’ve been waiting for.
As might be expected, Katie is a big reader, and her favorite book of all time is
Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban. She also enjoys reading other fantasy authors such as Diana Wynne Jones and Tamora Pierce, as well as mysteries and the occasional science fiction. Born and raised in Fredericksburg, Katie is a lifelong CRRL customer. She is the proud aunt of five-month-old Larkin, and she plans on keeping his nursery library up to date.
Katie lives in Fredericksburg in a cute little apartment with her cat, Scooter, and can be reached by email at
katie.neal@crrl.org.
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Selecting and Requesting Books
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We were glad to hear many people found our last Sightlines note on cartridges so helpful. We also got a lot of questions about how the books that are sent out are chosen, so we wanted to take a moment to answer those questions.
Books are selected for your lists in two ways. If you inform us, either by phone, email, letter, or sending in a completed Talking Book Topics form, we add them to your request list with the label “Patron Requests.” You can view available books at
loc.gov/nls/braille-audio-reading-materials.
We can also choose books for you. We do this only if you’ve previously given your approval. We search the catalog using the information we have about your favorite subjects and likes. Please let us know whenever you would like to change that information. We both look for specific books and perform an Autoselects search, where our system gives us a list of books to look at. These books are added to your request list as “Autoselects,” and we mail them out after we have sent your own requests.
Finally, some of you who are really avid readers may have what’s called a “WebReads user” account. These accounts, which Access Services Librarian Babak Zarin can help you set up, lets you search the catalog the Talking Book Librarians do and make requests directly.
Once on your request list, a book stays in order until it goes out. This means you can get a lot of books by one author if you’ve requested that, or waiting on an older request if you’ve requested something more recently. But we can mix it up-you tell us.
If you have any questions, please get in touch by calling 540-372-1144, extension 7054, or by emailing us at
talking-books@crrl.org.
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Many thanks to those who attended our Talking Book Club phone call. While we won’t be doing it again this winter, we’re looking forward to offering the book club call again later this year.
Our fall read, G
ood Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter
(DB 37043), seemed not to inspire much conversation, but hopefully our winter read will!
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This winter, we’ll be reading
The Princess Bride
by William Goldman (DB 10903).
A mix of comedy, adventure, fantasy, drama, romance, and fairy tale,
The Princess Bride
is a tale told to a sick boy by his grandfather about Westley, a farm boy-turned-pirate who faces numerous obstacles in his quest to reunite with his true love, Buttercup. A bestseller and modern classic,
The Princess Bride
was adapted as a movie in 1987.
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Everyone who receives
Sightlines is welcome to attend Central Rappahannock Regional Library programs at any of our branches in Fredericksburg, Stafford, Spotsylvania, and Westmoreland.
You can find listings of events in the library’s quarterly
@Your Library Magazine, which can be found at any library branch, in hundreds of community locations, and can be downloaded as a PDF from
librarypoint.org/at-your-library.
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Fiction Bestsellers
- The Dark Side by Danielle Steel (DB96431)
- Summer of ‘69 by Elin Hildebrand (DB95859)
- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (DB95925)
- Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini (DB93354)
- A Better Man: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel by Louise Penny (DB96139)
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Non-Fiction Bestsellers
- Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself by Jill Biden (DB96278)
- America’s Reluctant Prince: The Life of John F. Kennedy Jr. by Steven M. Gillon (DB96141)
- Sacred Duty: A Soldier’s Tour at Arlington National Cemetery by Tom Cotton (DB95547)
- Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (DB96422)
- Every Man a Hero by Ray Lambert and Jim DeFelice (DB96041)
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by Chuck Gray
Mainstream gaming has been making strides in overall accessibility. Some are tweaks to the game options, such as enlarged text and on-screen controls, color-blind visuals, customizable controls, game difficulty adjustments, and the slow death of the dreaded “mash the button to stay alive” gimmick, the bane of all gamers. Directional audio is also being honed in many 3D titles like
Far Cry New Dawn and
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Perhaps one of the most exciting new developments in gaming audio is the Racing Auditory Display, or RAD, developed by computer scientist Brian A. Smith at Columbia University. RAD uses audio cues to inform the player about the car’s speed and turn notification and has led to race times improved over sighted players.
Microsoft has also been a major presence in game accessibility with the release of its XBox Adaptive Controller. The adaptive controller is a hub for many different types of control input devices that can be mapped to different game functions. Devices like quadriplegic controllers, foot-motion controllers, one-handed joysticks, and more than twenty other options are all compatible. More information about the Adaptive Controller can be found at
tinyurl.com/adaptivecontroller.
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There are a number of sites dedicated to helping individuals with visual, physical, and nerve impairments. One such site is
caniplaythat.com where you will find popular games reviewed based on their accessibility, as well as a host of other articles related to the subject. game-accessibility.com/game/ provides similar game reviews and examines if they can be recommended based on categories like Blind, Low Vision, Color Blind, Tremor, One Arm, One Key, No Voice, Deaf, Illiterate, and Epilepsy.
audiogames.net is a portal for games based around audio experiences rather than video. It links out to hundreds of different game sites, though given the size of the list, you will encounter some dead links here and there.
Finally, YouTube, believe it or not, is a rich source for gamers across a spectrum of accessibility needs. Searching for “blind gaming” or “game accessibility” will net you hundreds of results. That said, be prepared for content you may find objectionable or even offensive--it is YouTube after all.
Game accessibility is, unfortunately, still the exception and not the rule, but that is changing, and these are resources that will help you stay up to date.
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Holidays and Next Sightlines
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Our department will be closed on February 17 for Presidents’ Day. The next Sightlines will come out mid-April 2020.
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For book reservations, to share a review, or more information, contact Access Services Librarian Babak Zarin at 540-372-1144 extension 7054, Toll Free: 1-800-628-4807, or
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Reminder: If you receive
Sightlines
on a cartridge, please return the cartridge after listening to
Sightlines
.
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Inspiring lifelong learning for everyone in our community.
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Serving Fredericksburg, Stafford, Spotsylvania, and Westmoreland, Virginia.
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