BARD, the NLS Braille and Audio Reading Download website, now offers expanded functionality and will serve as a gateway to exciting new services in the future.
We are pleased to announce that if you use BARD on the web, you will have access to BARD 2 in late July. If you’re not a BARD user, this is your chance to sign up for the service and get instant access to hundreds of thousands of audio and braille books and magazines for reading with an NLS digital talking-book machine, a personal smart device with BARD Mobile, a Braille eReader, or your PC with the BARD Express player. Contact us at chris.boynton@maine.gov or 1-800-762-7106 to sign up for BARD. You can follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/MSLTalkingBooksPlus/
Features of the new website include:
Access to the new and improved BARD website requires a change in your login procedures. We will contact all BARD web users and provide instructions for the new login procedures. If you have any questions, need assistance, or just want to tell us about your experience with BARD 2, contact us at 1-800-762-7106.
This document outlines many of the new features included with the BARD 2 experience. Features will continue to be added and refined such as adding the Spanish and French BARD interfaces.
We recommend reading this entire document before logging into the BARD 2 website. Once logged into the website, you may wish to refer to this email as you experience each of the new features of BARD 2.
At the top of each page is a button called My BARD. Expanding this button, you will see 4 additional links. They are wish list, Reading History, Subscriptions, and Account Settings.
BARD 2 can search your wish list. Use the search field from within the wish list to perform a keyword search of everything in your wish list. For example, let’s say you subscribe to People Magazine. In the search field, type “people,” and click the Search button. All books and magazines that use the word “people” anywhere in the listing will appear.
Once in your wish list, click the button, “Refine your wish list” to open a dialog where you can choose to sort the titles on your wish list, choose the format you’re searching for (braille, audio, or both), view by type such as books, magazines, or Music, and by language, or a particular subject.
Replacing the download link normally found after book annotations is a button called Take Action. Clicking on this button to expand it, you will find previously hidden options including download, remove from your wish list, and prioritize. Choosing prioritize will move the title to the top of your wish list.
Included in the My BARD menu is your Reading History, formerly known as Previous Downloads. Like the Wish list, you can use the Search field to search your Reading History. If you want to refine your search, click the button “Refine your Reading History” to sort this page in multiple ways such as format, type, language or subject.
Visit this page to manage your book and magazine subscriptions.
Use this page to tell BARD your preferred language, display result formats, display size, and choose the number of results you want displayed per page. Also on Account Settings, you can choose what you want BARD to do with magazines that have been on your wish list for more than a year and have BARD send you an email when new subscription items become available on BARD and are automatically placed on your wish list.
This page now includes the ability to refine results by format such as audio or braille, by language, and by subject. Note: you can choose more than one subject if you wish to see titles in more than one subject. After making your choices, Choose the “Refine results” button to view the titles that match your refinements. If you wish to reset the Recently Added results to their defaults, choose the “Refine Recently Added results” button and then the “Reset all fields” button on the following page. Note: simply leaving the Recently Added page will reset all fields back to their default settings.
This page defaults to displaying fiction only. To choose nonfiction, select the link, Go to most popular nonfiction. To refine your results, select the button, Refine Most Popular Results to see various ways to refine what you see on this page. Options include choosing a format such as audio or braille, choosing a language if you want to see results in a language other than the preferred language you have selected in Account Settings, and by subject. Note: you can choose more than one subject if you wish to see titles in more than one subject on this page. If you wish to reset this page to its default settings, choose the “Refine Most Popular results” button and then the “Reset all fields” button on the following page. Note: simply leaving the Most Popular page will reset all fields back to their default settings.
Once you have performed a BARD keyword search, you can refine the results by choosing the button, “Refine your search results.” Options include by format such as audio or braille, how you wish to view the search terms such as, in the author, title, narrator, or in the annotation, by language, and by subject. If you wish to reset this page to its default settings, choose the “Refine your search results” button and then the “Reset all fields” button on the following page. Note: simply leaving the Most Popular page will reset all fields back to their default settings.
Perform advanced searches by keyword, title, author, narrator, and more.
To browse all available books on BARD by subject, open the drop-down menu on the BARD main page, highlight the subject, and choose the Go button. To refine your results, expand the button, “Refine your search results.” Refine the results by format or language. If you wish to include any additional subjects in your search, choose the subjects, then select the “Refine Results” button to search BARD with your updated refinements. To clear your refinements and return to the search results page, choose the “Reset all fields” button.
The music collection main page has search and browse functions identical to those on the BARD main page, but they return results from the music collection only. Entering a term in the field labeled “Search music” and then selecting the “Search” button will search for the term in author/composer, narrator, subject, annotation, and book number of all the materials in the music collection available on BARD. Once you have performed a keyword search, you can refine the results by choosing the button, “Refine your search results.” Options include by format such as audio or braille, How you wish to view the search terms such as, in the author, title, narrator, or in the annotation, by language, and by subject. If you wish to reset this page to its default settings, choose the “Refine your search results” button, and then the “Reset all fields” button on the following page. Note: simply leaving the Music page will reset all fields back to their default settings.
Choosing the link “Advanced Search for Music Scores and Books,” you will be presented with a list of these ways to search:
Note: there are some titles in the collection in a foreign language, so you will not get all relevant results if searching in English terms only.
The “Browse by subject” option lists all available materials in the music collection by subject. Choose the subject from the list and then select the “Go” button.
To search for magazines, choose Magazines from the BARD main page. On the resulting page, you can find the most recent issues posted for each magazine by choosing the link for the Most recently added magazine issues. To see the list of issues for a specific magazine, highlight the magazine in the drop-down menu, and select the Go button. You will be taken to a list of the available issues for that magazine. Note: that each magazine in the drop-down list is followed by its format (braille or audio) in parenthesis.
