Established by an act of Congress in 1931, the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) has grown to a program that supplies nearly 23 million recorded discs and braille materials to approximately 500,000 readers through a network of 140 cooperating libraries around the country. During 2003 NLS completed the five-year development phase of digital talking book (DTB) technology and began the conversion phase to implement the new digital talking books and playback machines by 2008. After five years of development and planning, NLS began moving the talking-book program from analog cassettes to a digital format. During the year NLS issued several Requests for Proposals for equipment procurement and conversion of analog recorded catalog titles to DTB format.
The Web-braille program continued to provide access to braille books and magazines online at www.loc.gov/nls/braille. In addition to providing access to braille material to users with a special braille keyboard and screen, the system allows a library that has lost a braille volume to order a new embossed, bound copy and put the title back in circulation.
