Thanks to Jerry Blum for letting ViPACE know about this article.
from
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54630-2002Jun14?language=printer



washingtonpost.com: All Ears: Library Service Seeks New Digital Player
washingtonpost.com

All Ears: Library Service Seeks New Digital Player

By Linda Hales
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 15, 2002; Page C01

For 71 years, the Library of Congress has served as the nation's guardian
angel of literacy, ensuring the blind and reading-disabled free access to
millions
of talking books and magazines. Now the digital revolution is about to make
that task easier -- or harder still -- depending on how well the library
succeeds
in its new role as design patron.

The library is planning a $75 million, three-year conversion from cassette
tapes to microchips -- the audio program's first technological update in
three
decades.

The goal is to trade 23 million cassettes for memory cards, just as vinyl
was supplanted by tape back in the 1970s. To do so, the library, which
supplies
special playback equipment, will need by 2008 a new digital device to serve
730,000 reading-disabled people. As many as 3 million people may be eligible
for the program, which is operated by a branch of the library known as the
National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Director
Frank Kurt Cylke calls this "the greatest challenge NLS has ever faced."

Consumer electronics are among the most evolved of modern designs,
incorporating the latest technology, dazzling aesthetics and
user-friendliness. But those
involved in the talking-book program believe the library's next-generation
machine will need features not available in standard off-the-shelf products.
While PCs and cell phones are becoming throwaway equipment, the library is
focusing on the kind of durability that has enabled its current machine
design
to survive so long. "We can't afford to go through massive, wrenching
changes like this very often," explains Michael Moodie, NLS research and
development
officer.

To figure out what such a machine might look like, and how it might work,
the library enlisted the Industrial Designers Society of America,
headquartered
near Dulles airport. IDSA turned the quest into a contest involving
industrial design students across the country. June 7 was judgment day.

More than 140 prototypes were spread out on tables in a conference room at
the NLS offices at 13th and Taylor streets NW, in Petworth. There were
pocket-size
players and tabletop entries. Some models resembled silvery boomboxes and
retro phones. One device was shaped like a football. Another looked like
Darth
Vader's helmet. A silvery "Lady Bug" had all the sleekness anyone could
expect in the 21st century but broke the contest rules by requiring a
separate
docking station.

Students had been asked to incorporate real-world needs of users: tactile
markings for sightless readers; large controls for arthritic hands to
manipulate;
portability, but also extraordinary stability. All were supposed to be
impervious to spilled drinks and able to withstand occasional shipping in
little
more than a Manila envelope.

Agile young minds responded with a mind-bending array of buttons, levers,
hinges and even a zipper that could activate functions. Most of the youthful
designers
had taken inspiration from the tools of their environment: PC gaming
gadgets, MP3 players and contemporary "blob" architecture.

But as the jury of six professional designers and senior library staff
members worked their way around the room, a clear preference emerged for
something
familiar. First prize went to a prototype in the shape of a book.

The winner was "Dook," a rectangular device that opened like a standard
volume. Designer Lachezar Tsvetanov, a junior at the University of
Bridgeport in
Connecticut, put the controls in one half, speakers and memory card in the
other half, and volume regulator in the hinge.

Tsvetanov, who grew up in Bulgaria, chose the form for two reasons. He
thought a book would be immediately familiar to seniors, who make up half
the program's
users and are seen as wary of new technology. The designer was also
determined that people who needed talking books be able to blend into the
world around
them.

"Users want to be like anybody else," he said. "If you see a young blind
person walking down the street and holding an odd-shaped product, it would
really
stand out."

Tsvetanov will be awarded $5,000 for ingenuity at the industrial design
society's annual conference July 20-23 in Monterey, Calif. And his device
will be
displayed at the library's Madison Building on Capitol Hill, along with four
second- and third-place winners.

The contest was not intended to produce a design for manufacture. The NLS
hoped merely to glean ideas for the next step in the process before asking
Congress
to put millions into the 2005 budget for a total upgrade.

Director Cylke estimates the cost of converting to the new system will be
"an additional $25 million a year for a three-year period." The current NLS
budget
is about $48 million.

Design innovation has empowered the audiobook program from the start.
According to the NLS, the long-playing record was invented for the talking
book program
in the 1930s. In the 1970s, the library developed a special player for its
four-track tapes, which can play for six hours. (Copyright law requires that
NLS materials be usable only by program participants.) The 1970s-era tape
player, which is large and ungainly by today's standard, is still in use
today.

Throughout the judging process, Moodie worried aloud about the potential for
breakage, the difficulty of manufacturing, and the cost. Fellow judge Brian
Matt, an industrial designer from Boston who teaches at MIT and the Rhode
Island School of Design, held out for something smart and aesthetically
pleasing.
Thomas Bickford, an NLS senior reviewer for audiobooks, couldn't see and
didn't care what color the buttons were, only whether he could feel his way
around
the controls. Jim Mueller, an industrial designer in Chantilly and an IDSA
expert in universally accessible design, was taken with the idea of a
digital
book.

"I can't think of anything that could be a more eloquent format," he said
later.

The NLS began on an experimental basis transferring cassette titles to
digital format last year. By the library's own count, at least 1 million
digital
machines will be needed.

There is also a move to make use of PCs. A software-based talking book
player is being tested on a PC. Some eligible readers have DSL lines or
cable and
are asking for Internet delivery, which the NLS hopes to begin in a limited
fashion in 2003.

But Moodie believes there will be a need for a playback machine for a long
time to come. "You can't say to somebody, 'You have to buy a PC if you want
to
read,' " he says.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company


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