Muserology Cafe

Reading Between the Dots (September 2009)

by Brittany Metts, age 18, Maryland

"Brittany, you have so many library books in this house, it isn't funny!" my grandmother yelled from the living room. You would think 30 library books in the house wouldn't be a pain, right? Wrong. That's because those books were Braille books. For those of you who don't know, Braille is a raised-dot code that blind or visually disabled individuals read using their fingers. Because Braille is raised, it takes up a lot of room on a page. One book in print can be many volumes in Braille. For example, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is about 20 volumes in Braille.

My work as a library volunteer started in the summer of 2008. The Baltimore public school system requires all of its students to do community service before graduation, and I decided to volunteer at my state library for the blind and visually handicapped.

On my first day, I Brailled six copies of a booklet. Don't worry--I didn't have to make all of those bumps by hand! Like other Braille documents and books, the booklet was typed on a computer. A special program converted the print file into a Braille file. Then a machine called a Braille embosser, which is hooked up to the computer, embossed all six copies of the booklet in a matter of minutes.

The next few days at the library, I helped with book inventory. I unpacked and organized new arrivals, including, you guessed it, Muse magazine. The company that Brailles and sends books to the library (National Library Services for the Blind and Physically Handicapped) also Brailles Muse and other magazines. Picture or cartoon descriptions are set between special Braille symbols that act like parentheses. Depending on the publisher (or transcriber, as a Braille producer is called), the descriptions can be vivid, letting the reader know what the picture looks like, or just a few nondescriptive words to let the reader know the picture exists. Unfortunately, Muse's picture descriptions are not so descriptive.

After unpacking the new arrivals, I went down to the area where they store the Braille books. Because my BrailleNote, a portable Braille device similar to a computer, broke down, I had to use an old-fashioned Braillewriter, similar to a typewriter, to write down information about the books, including author, title, catalog number, and whether any volumes were missing. Besides Braille materials, the library also provides large-print materials and literature on cassette (a.k.a. "talking books"). When new and previously-borrowed talking books came to the library, I helped to rewind them.

During my break, I used the computers in the library's media center. The computers have a program that reads the text on the screen, a program that enlarges the text and images on the screen, scanner hardware (for scaning text into the computer) and sofware that reads aloud text that's been scanned in, and the Braille embossing program. I liked to use the library computers to surf the Internet. When I go onlie, the speech software reads aloud what's on a Web page, and I use the keyboard to navigate. The worker I was with at the library helped me to get my own e-mail address, which I now use to turn my assignments in to my teachers.

By the end of my volunteership, I gained a lot. First of all, I now see librarian as a possible career goal. I like that a lot of a librarian's work is done electronically, like inventory and scaning in books. I know that some aspects of being a librarian would be hard for me, though, like searching shelves for books, especially if the books are not in the order I expect them to be.

Also, doing work with cassette and Braille book inventory helped me to realize how hard the library works to provide patrons with material. Now i try to be more mindful of how many items I check out of the library, and am careful to return them in a timely manner. Though nothing at my library has due dates, what if somebody checked out the last copy of a book and never returned it, and then somebody else who really wanted to read it didn't get to check it out? I've had that feeling, and it isn't a nice one. So whether you are a member of a regular or specialized library, don't damage materials you check out, and be sure to return them when you're done.