Yes, if you download any books to your PC, you'll need to put them on a blank cartridge, a USB flash drive or some other USB attachable drive that you can plug into your NLS player. Note that only a blank cartridge is officially supported by the NLS, but other flash drives do work. You can find out more at the BARD Talk web site at http://www.bardtalk.com/. For example, you can find out where to purchase blank cartridges and which flash drives people have gotten to work with the NLS player. Of course, you can store these books on your hard drive and transfer them to your cartridge or flash drive as needed. You can also just leave them on the BARD site and download them when you need them.
There are also several DAISY book readers that will play NLS books, such as the Booksense and the Victor Stream. You'll need a code to access the BARD books, but you can get this from the maker of your DAISY book player. Again, you can get this information from the BARD site, the BARD Talk web site or your state library service. You cannot play BARD books on your PC. I've exchanged emails with people at the NLS, and contrary to popular opinion, this isn't because they're worried about the material being copied. It has more to do with how to spend their limited resources and get the most books into people's hands the quickest. In other words, coming up with a DAISY player for the PC or working out an authorization scheme for existing DAISY players, such as FS Reader, just wasn't high enough on their priority list. Remember that NLS doesn't just support computer savvy people, and furthermore, a lot of computer savvy people aren't interested in reading books on their PC. I personally would appreciate this feature, but I can certainly understand why it wasn't very high on their priority list. -- Christopher chalt...@gmail.com -----Original Message----- From: pc-audio-boun...@pc-audio.org [mailto:pc-audio-boun...@pc-audio.org] On Behalf Of Joanne Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2010 6:27 PM To: PC Audio Discussion List Subject: Re: question about playing Bard books on computer So Kevin, in order to keep books could I also use an external drive to store them? And then in order to play them I'd need a cartridge so they can be listened to? I will be getting a player myself so wanted to understand how this is done. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kevin Minor" <kmi...@windstream.net> To: "'PC Audio Discussion List'" <pc-audio@pc-audio.org> Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2010 7:00 PM Subject: RE: question about playing Bard books on computer > Hi Joanne. > > You can't play Bard books on the PC. This is done on purpose so they > can't be copied for others not registered with Bard to use. > > When your friend gets his player, he'll need either a flash drive or > blank cartridge to put the book on in order to play it in the NLS player. > > If you have more questions, send 'em on. > > Kevin Minor, Lexington, KY > kmi...@windstream.net To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: pc-audio-unsubscr...@pc-audio.org
