The Library of Congress is developing a sophisticated "life cycle" cost tool to help it plan the complex transition from analog audio cassette books to a digital format in its national reading program for blind and physically handicapped individuals.
Currently, the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) serves more than 765,000 readers with a circulation of 23 million books and magazines each year. A union catalog currently lists 325,000 braille and audio titles, in 22 million copies representing 40 languages, available to eligible users.
NLS is building a life-cycle cost model to help it choose, from among the many systems that are technologically feasible and the most efficient, a cost effective way to deliver digital talking books. The life-cycle cost project involves close working relationships with program patrons and the national network of cooperating libraries to accurately identify and categorize all program costs.
"This is a significant intellectual effort that will allow the Library to accurately identify overall program costs for the current talking book program as well as to project costs for the program in the years ahead," said NLS Director Frank Kurt Cylke. It will provide the Library with a management tool that will allow it to compare various digital talking book implementation scenarios. "For example, we will be able to project costs to the Library and to the national cooperating network of libraries for each of the delivery technologies now available or that become viable in the next several years. This model will be the cost analysis tool helping to build the platform for the Library to launch its new digital talking book service. With it, the Library will understand the costs required to "ramp-up" its new program over a period of years," Mr. Cylke said. The model will be completed by September 2000.
This cost analysis tool is the latest in a string of developments that NLS has pursued over the last two years. Laying the digital foundation is under way with development of a digital talking book standard through the National Information Standards Organization. The Library has installed its first state-of the-art digital recording studio that will permit specification development for a digital mastering and duplication system. It has installed a digital duplication system at its Cincinnati facility, and it will require narration contractors to begin providing digital recordings beginning in fiscal year 2001.
Staff from NLS met on Feb. 24 and 25 with representatives of the network of cooperating libraries for its first national review of the draft life-cycle cost model. Comments will also be solicited from program users nationally and from various constituent groups. Representing the network of cooperating libraries were Donna B. Calvert, West Virginia Library Commission; Jenifer Flaxbart, Texas State Library and Archives Commission; Linda Montgomery, Arizona State Department of Libraries, Archives and Public Records; and Lissa Shanahan, Indiana State Library. Representing the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies was Jim Scheppke, director, Oregon State Library.
