(upbeat music) - To have a place where you have sort of a hub of like-minded individuals facing the same challenges as you every single day is so powerful.

- We really build relationships here.

I've gotten to know patrons by first names.

They feel like family.

- We're the Library of Accessible Media for we're at the intersection of Enfield and Baum Boulevard.

We serve people with print disabilities, and that could be someone who can't hold the book or turn pages, and we provide them materials to help them to read for life.

The people who utilize this service are voracious readers.

We circulate in excess of a million titles a year.

So we serve them with digital materials, large print books, audio described DVDs.

The most popular option we have are digital audio books, - [Audio Book Reader] The Silver Linings Playbook.

Current position, the Concrete Donut.

- The Carnegie Library has audible materials, but primarily I use the items available through LAMP and I do read quite a bit.

So it does provide me with a great deal of entertainment and learning.

- Everybody can love a library.

It is truly a community resource.

Yes, if you love to read, it's a very important community resource, but it's nice to have those other opportunities.

- Okay, so the next thing I will tell you is I'm going to do a countdown and we will begin.

We'll do one piece at a time with a stop in between.

- At LAMP, we make books accessible by recording them and then we upload them to the Library of Congress.

We service BARD, which stands for Braille and Audio Reading Download.

And that's kind of like Amazon's audible for the Library of Congress.

- [Audio Book Reader] My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings.

- So, things start here.

We have a wonderful selection of books that we would like to do.

All these books are available.

What's really cool about these books is they haven't been done anywhere before.

This book just came out in print maybe a month ago.

We would like to do it, but we're going to double check everything to make sure that Amazon and Audible's not doing it.

And this would be done by a narrator.

- The body of the bed has a crumpled sheet laid over a bumpy mattress.

The contours of the sheet reveal a body shaped cavity.

- We get volunteers from all walks of life, from students, from children, to older adults.

We even have some celebrity politicians.

Here is Senator Jay Costa and Representative Lindsey Williams.

We have Andrew McCutchen, has been in our booth.

After narration, we go into production.

Production is very involved.

And then we have another final check, which is called Quality Assurance.

We have some of our patrons listen to the entire book.

- Right now, I'm inserting retakes, which means I've edited already.

I found different things that need to be changed.

Then the narrator has recorded the corrections and I'm inserting the corrections.

- Only after they say it's okay can we send it up to Library of Congress.

- This is one of the original stories, this is a book, one book.

So if you were the postman, this is how people accessed the service originally.

Then they had a cassette player, and then they'd have to do all these stuff with the cassettes to put all these stories on tapes.

They'd have like four sides to each cassette, but then the format changed to digital talking books.

And then now they will give you 20 books on a cartridge in whatever order you want, the whole series.

And these are prolific readers, the people who use our service.

- Good afternoon, you have reached the Library of Accessible Media for Pennsylvanians.

How can I help you?

You are speaking to Angela.

Who am I speaking with?

- So we have a group of readers advisors who answer the phone here.

And what they help people with is just a ton of different things.

- Some people call and they just wanna talk about their favorite books.

Some people need book recommendations.

- Okay, let me get those marked for you.

I like the title of that last one, it made me smile.

When you know what somebody likes through building that relationship and of course seeing the types of materials that they're most interested in, I can draw from my own reading experience and then I can tell them something or make suggestions.

- They answer the phones Monday through Friday, nine to five.

Last year, I think the reader advisors received and made about 45,000 calls.

- And when they call, they get a live person answering the phone.

They take so seriously their job of finding you your next favorite book.

- We get thank you letters and voicemails all the time from patrons and patrons' families.

- I hear routinely, patrons tell me that this service has changed their life and that without these audio books that they don't know what they would do.

- At the very bottom is customize and reorder.

- Oh, okay.

- And you can go in there-- - And do it?

- Yeah, deselect all those folders.

- As we grow, we add on different services to kind of enhance new literacies like technology and helping people understand the accessibility features of their smart devices, for instance.

- [Phone] The image shows a group of six women sitting around a table in a restaurant.

- Literacy in whatever way, shape, or form you receive it, is impactful for cognitive understanding and just general awareness of the world.

And so it doesn't have to be reading a book.

You can listen to a book, you can learn how to read a bus schedule.

You could learn how to navigate a tactile map.

- Path of totality.

This is for the 2024 eclipse.

It's got a QR code on it, so it actually says scan for text, but these were drawings that NASA did to make them so you could feel the different shapes and things.

- We have open tech, which is where people talk about different technology, whether it's apps that are or aren't accessible.

We help each other troubleshoot through the accessibility barriers, things like that.

And then the second event is Tactile Tuesdays.

- This is a swell form.

- We see the world through touch, so the Tactile Tuesday event is a really powerful way for the blind to get to experience certain things.

We had 3D printed scorpions, to a gondola, to swell form book covers.

It's just a really cool way for us to get to understand the world through touch.

(uplifting music) - I think it's really important to have materials accessible.

You know, it helps people stay connected.

- Oh my goodness gracious.

How are you today, Jacqueline?

We're committed to serving our patrons and getting feedback from our patrons and learning how we can improve service.

And it's such a community and team here.

- You don't have to love reading to love a library.

There's other things that can be offered.

Libraries are great for individuals that need access to a computer or finding a resource.

The librarians are always available.

It is truly a community resource.

- No matter if you're blind, able-bodied, deaf, you have to find the people that you can relate to that can help you and you can help them.

- People love stories.

It is such a great builder of community.

The staff that work here, they're so dedicated, so good.

And the patrons who come here and dedicate their time and advice, people laughing and having fun, and it's a library and these are library patrons and it's all coming together.

(uplifting music fades out)