Continued from last week Part 2 DK: What motivates your incarcerated students to enroll in the braille music certification program, especially after toiling for months or years to achieve literary braille certification? KG: The opportunity to work in a prison braille program is a high honor which the prisons award to inmates who demonstrate ability, …
At NLS, we have an unoccupied cubicle with an electric piano and a small couch in the corridor leading to the music section. Shortly after the completion of the building renovations early this year, a sign saying “Piano Lounge” appeared on the outside wall of this cubicle. Now and then, people would stop in to …
This is our fourth blog on the digitization of braille music. So, what is new with this project? First, we are boosting our production by outsourcing the proofreading of scores scanned using Optical Braille Recognition (OBR). Our braille music specialist Gilbert Busch continues to review all the scans completed on DotScan so we can provide …
One of the most nerve-racking events I ever experienced as a music student was participating in master classes. I remember one class in particular vividly; the feeling of slight panic as the master class teacher repeated for the fourth time, “no, not like that, try again.” I could hear the audience shifting in their seats …
Continued from last week While Bettye Krolick’s How to Read Braille Music: An Introduction is suitable for students who already know the basics of music and only need to learn how to decipher braille music symbols, Richard Taesch’s An Introduction to Music for the Blind Student is suitable for students who are just starting their …
I always get excited when a patron requests a book on reading braille music because it means one more patron might be able to take advantage of our wonderful braille music collection. In my opinion, braille music readers have an edge over non-readers since they are able to explore and interpret the score themselves. In …
Recently, I’ve been dismayed to hear some patrons say, “I know you don’t have such and such in your collection because I already checked on BARD.” After receiving a few of these comments, I realized that some of our patrons mistakenly believe that our entire collection is available on BARD. I would like to use …
Today has been a great day. Two young readers registered for our music services and checked out braille music books for the first time. We have a small number of young braille music patrons, so getting two new readers in one day is something to be excited about. One of the two new patrons was …
NLS music section was at the 16th Library of Congress National Book Festival at the Washington Convention Center on Saturday, September 24, 2016, to greet visitors and explain about our services. This event provided a wonderful opportunity for outreach, and we were able to talk to a wide variety of people who were not aware …
