[Dtb-talk] digital talking book issue and creating daisy files

[Peter Donahue]

Good afternoon again Greg and listers,

Thanks for your explanation of the plans and the concerns. I would add that
some want to ensure that DTBS be playable on all equipment capable of
playing them on players designed to handle the particular media on which
they are distributed be it an NLS issued DTB player, or one purchassed from
a third party without the need to have to purchass access keys from yet
another party, etc. I don't believe anyone is opposed to the conversion of
the NLS collection to a digital format. We're just concerned that we'll
still be able to play these books on any player designed to handle their
distribution media without the need to jump through the kind of hoops we
must jump with books from RFB&D.

Peter Donahue


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Greg Kearney" <gkearney at gmail.com>
To: "Discussion of Digital Talking Books" <dtb-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 5:20 AM
Subject: Re: [Dtb-talk] digital talking book issue and creating daisy files


I'll try and give an overview here of what is going on.

The National Library Service for the Blind and handicapped, NLS, is
asking for funding from congress to convert its existing tape system
to the DAISY digital talking book standard. DAISY is an international
standard for digital talking books that permits advanced functions
such as  page navigation, bookmarking and so on.

The NLS has proposed to replace the tape players with a USB based
flash memory player designed by Humanware Canada. The books would
come on a specially designed USB cartage. The NLS players would be
able to keep track of where you are in many books and, as they will
have no moving parts, should be more durable than the existing tape
system.

There have been some concerns expressed that the ease of duplication
of the books in DAISY format would lead to the pirating of the
recordings. To counter this the NLS proposal is to encrypt the audio
of the books as well as the parts of the DAISY book files that tell
the player the order in which to play the audio. In addition the
format the audio is in is somewhat unusual as well.

As I said the whole matter is before congress where some questions
have been raised about the cost of developing the new program given
the increasing use of commercial recording of books. DAISY has
significant advantages over standard CD recording not the least of
which is the navigation and compactness of the recordings. Books that
would five standard CDs for example can be produced in less than 50
megabytes in the DAISY format. Had the commercial producers used
DAISY to start with the funding issue might not have come up. But
DAISY requires special players and not standard CD playback devices.
So we need to support NLS's request for funding to make this long
overdue change over from tape. by contrast some of the European
libraries have used DAISY for over 10 years now.

DAISY books are produced with special software which takes or in some
cases makes from text-to-speech recordings and makes a series of
files known as SMIL which know where the navigation points, be they
chapters, pages or even paragraphs are. These files, along with some
other support files are what make up a DAISY book.  DAISY books can
be a simple as a single recording with no navigation or as complex as
the Bible which can be navigated to the verse. They can also have the
original source text included and, on a computer, that text can be
shown as the book is read. I would note here that the NLS system will
not have the original source text included. In the spirit of complete
disclosure I should note that I am the author of one such bit of
production software the open source DTBmaker.

The issue which has been debated here of late has centered around the
wisdom of encrypting the audio and other files in the NLS books as
this make the production of playback software and hardware very
difficult. I would like to add that no one on this list, as far as I
recall, has expressed any reservations about the basic plan to switch
to DAISY only the issue of the encryption system being employed. So
the debate here has been on a narrow technical detail of a much
bigger program, one that deserves our support.

I hope this answers your questions and I hope this information is
correct. I'm sure I will be corrected if not.

Greg Kearney


On Apr 29, 2007, at 03:01 , lisa Kidder wrote:

> Hello All:
>  I am new to the list.  Can someone please explain what is going on
> with the National Library Service and digital books?  and how are
> daisy files created? Also, is there a daisy users list? If so, can
> someone please send me the e-mail address that I would need to use
> in order to subscribe.
>
> Lisa.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dtb-talk mailing list
> Dtb-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/dtb-talk

_______________________________________________
Dtb-talk mailing list
Dtb-talk at nfbnet.org
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/dtb-talk