RFB&D-NJ Unit News: Town Topics July 2, 2003 (text)

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Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic
New Jersey Unit
69 Mapleton Road
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
Phone 609-750-1830
Fax 609-750-9653

News

Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic® Sails Through Transitions Smoothly

By Becky Melvin

Town Topics, Volume LVII, No. 17
July 2, 2003

For volunteers Jeff Kaplan and Raleigh Rigler, recent transitions at the local recording studios of Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic® haven't dampened their enthusiasm or dedication to the nonprofit volunteer organization.

Mr. Kaplan spends an hour and a half, five times a week at the studio, reading or doing other volunteer duties, while Ms. Rigler commits nine hours each week to the work.

They're still getting used to the new location at St. Joseph's Seminary on Mapleton Road, as well as to the organization's switch to digital audio production from analog. But they aren't overly concerned by the changes, and neither, they said, are most of the other volunteers, a corps of more than 450 people.

Once you've "got the bug," it's hard to stay away, said Ms. Rigler, a retired small business owner.

Mr. Kaplan agreed: "This is a dedicated group. It's well organized, and the people are upbeat and engaged."

Mr. Kaplan, who describes himself as "a downsized IT guy" in the midst of a job search, places a lot of importance to his RFB&D work. "It gives me something every day to contribute," he said.

Two Studios Combined

In March, the Princeton recording studio moved to St. Joseph's from its former location beneath the Hibben Road gymnasium of Princeton Theological Seminary. The West Windsor studio moved to St. Joseph's from offices within Carnegie Center. Those offices were close to the organization's national headquarters on Roszel Road.

While the West Windsor volunteers miss some aspects of Carnegie Center (the swan pond, for example), joining the two local studios together gives the New Jersey unit some muscle. It's now the largest RFB&D recording studio in the nation, with 12 recording booths, compared with nine booths in the next largest facility. In all, there are more than two dozen RFB&D studios across the country.

Muscle is needed because what goes into making audio books is a lot more than pushing the record button and speaking into a microphone. The organization has developed a complex system of recording to ensure that listeners get completely accurate and quality sound recordings.

Readers are tested to ensure familiarity with the types of books they will read. Math book readers, for example, have to demonstrate knowledge of the subject and an ability to handle the vocabulary of the subject. This is particularly important because the readers need to be able to describe complex mathematical charts and graphs. Readers of children's books are required to read everything perfectly.

Directors are volunteers who sit outside the sound booth, following along with the reader, using a duplicate copy of the book. The director ensures that skipped lines and misreadings are caught and corrected, and that descriptions of visual material in the books, such as pictures, charts, and maps, are fluently and understandably explained.

The system also includes a group of "book markers," or people who read through the books and write instructions in the margins for readers and directors to follow.

Marking requires an experienced volunteer to annotate the first book, and a less experienced volunteer to transfer those marks into a second copy, so that both the reader and the director are looking at the same thing.

What part of the job do volunteers like best?

Ms. Rigler and Mr. Kaplan both like reading best. This is a primary draw, they said. In addition to the satisfaction in knowing they are helping others, the volunteers like reading and subsequently learning about diverse subjects.

Fiction and historical novels are always fun to read, but they also enjoy the steady diet of law, management, and other textbook material they are assigned. In fact, textbooks account for the lion's share of material recorded by the group.

Mandate Expands

Founded in 1948, the group was formed initially to provide recordings of books for blinded World War II veterans. But today, only 25 percent of RFB&D's 116,000 members are visually impaired. The rest are recognized with learning disabilities including dyslexia.

This dramatic shift in the work of the organization has occurred incrementally over the course of several decades. The word dyslexia was added to its name in the 1990s.

This focus has resulted in RFB&D becoming the nation's largest educational library serving people who cannot effectively read standard print.

Its mission is to create opportunities for individual success by providing, and promoting the effective use of, accessible educational material.

The centerpiece of the group's outreach program is called Learning Through Listening. The program provides audio books to individual students and entire classrooms of students, who use tapes and CDs along with written material when written material alone is difficult or impossible to keep up with.

Using recording in this way is referred to as an accommodation rather than remediation of learning disabilities. And its success stories are notable.

Performance Improves

A North Brunswick High School junior, diagnosed with dyslexia in second grade, achieved a 4.25 GPA this year and is in honors classes like Advanced Placement Statistics, Chemistry, and U.S. History. She was always gifted in math and science, but struggled in English classes. After discovering RFB&D in her freshman year, her performance in English and in other subjects improved dramatically.

Fifth graders participating in the program with their teacher were so impressed and grateful for the positive experience that they took it upon themselves to raise $30 as a gift to RFB&D. The purpose they said was to purchase a membership for someone else who needed it.

Today, RFB&D has more than 91,000 titles in its Learning Through Listening Library. The collection ranges from Dr. Seuss to quantum physics and Black's Law Dictionary. Other organizations such as the Library of Congress also produce audio books; but none has as many textbooks.

Reading textbooks isn't without its unique set of complications. Mr. Kaplan, who has been volunteering for RFB&D for two years, has already found himself reading the same textbook a second time because a revised edition was published and students require the most up-to-date version.

Also members often request texts when they get their course syllabi, and volunteers can find themselves reading texts and getting installments shipped off to students on a just-in-time basis.

Nevertheless, the rewards of this work are tangible. And now with digital technology the product is even more effective for members. No longer do users have to scroll through tapes manually to find their desired place. Now they can push a button and move from section to section of the book.

The completely renovated floor of a large hall at St. Joseph's provides RFB&D's New Jersey unit plenty of space for audio book production activities, as well as for Braille production, fund-raising, outreach initiatives, and necessary amenities.

It's a place of natural beauty outside, and inside, offers things like a large volunteer lounge, which is indispensable during functions like the annual Record-A-Thon.

Independent Identity

Best of all, it's rent free for the first eight years because RFB&D paid $550,000 for upfront renovations, including asbestos removal and air conditioning, said Olivian Boon, interim executive director and studio director.

Ms. Boon said the new location helps establish the unit's identity apart from the headquarters. The New Jersey unit is, like the organization's more than two dozen studios across the country, funded independently and run under its own board of directors.

"Sometimes it's confusing for people when giving money to the studio," Ms. Boon said.

Ms. Boon has been with RFB&D for 13 years. She started as a volunteer. Today, she's overseeing the consolidation of the two New Jersey studios and the last phases of switching to digital recordings.

Famous readers at RFB&D have included Princeton University Professor Robert Fagles, who has translated the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as plays by Sophocles and Aeschylus, among other works.

Freeman Dyson, a distinguished physicist and educator from the Institute for Advanced Study, has also read, as has children's author Jennifer Morgan who read her science book Born With a Bang for this year's Record-A-Thon.

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