| |
|
by Toh Chin Aik
The SAVH library produces and loans out talking books, Braille books, descriptive videos and has some reference materials.
Talking books are printed books recorded either on minidisks, compact disks or cassettes. Tell Me Your Dreams by Sidney Sheldon, The Green Mile by Stephen King, The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans, Op-center Collection by Tom Clancy and Mars and Venus In Love by Dr. John Gray are among the visually handicapped clients' favourites.
The library also has some Mandarin talking books. The loan period for both Braille and talking books is one month. If they are damaged or lost, a penalty fee will be levied.
Descriptive videos are basically normal videos with a voice over during the non-conversational periods of the movie. This would enable a visually handicapped person to appreciate movies. Among the descriptive videos are Aladdin, Lion King, Sound of Music, Speed, Ransom and The Rock.
The loan period for these videos is two weeks. These items cannot be sent through the mail; as such borrowers must come and pick them up from the library. In addition to these services, the library also produces audio weekly newspaper and monthly magazines.
Informag - a weekly audio newspaper - contains selected Straits Times news articles. It comes in three C60 cassettes. Library members can subscribe to this service by buying six C60 cassettes and two postal wallets from SAVH's Assistive Devices Center. Once a member finish listening to the week's news, he/she has to send the cassettes back to us for updating with the new issue.
English Monthly is a monthly English audio magazine that the library produces. It contains selected articles from Reader's Digest and it comes in two C60 cassettes and a postal wallet. Once again, library members has to buy these blank cassettes and postal wallet.
Mandarin Monthly is a monthly Mandarin audio variety magazine. It is ninety minutes long. Like its English counterpart, library members would have to buy a C90 cassette and a postal wallet from the Assistive Devices Centre.
| home | site index | contact us |