Bringing Books to the Blind and Print Disabled

Mary Rodgers Beal

Talking Book Services Director

Mary Rodgers Beal, Mississippi's Talking Book Services Director, attended the National Library Service’s Regional Conference for the Northern and Southern regions last month in Daytona Beach, Florida. (The Western and Midlands regions held separate conferences.) The State Librarian of Florida, Amy Johnson, and NLS Deputy Director, Jason Yasner, gave opening remarks for the multi-day conference. A highlight of her trip was the entertainment for the conference banquet: a patron of FTBBL is also an accomplished trumpeter who serenaded conference-goers during their meal. 

Mary Rodgers learned about ways other libraries utilize outreach, toured the Florida Talking Book and Braille Library (FTBBL), and met with librarians from other talking book libraries. She thinks the structure of the Florida TBBL is pretty interesting; it's one of the few states to have subregional branches in addition to their regional library. These branches are housed in public libraries around Florida. Mississippi libraries can, of course, contact Talking Book Services here at MLC directly for information and tools to connect with the blind and print disabled in their communities. She also checked into how other regional libraries are handling the transition to Books-on-Demand and networked with other librarians about common successes and setbacks.

Beal says that she looks forward to sharing what she learned with others in her department! This will include refreshers on repair and operation of current digital players, as well as information on a new player set to come out in the future. 

Would you like to get involved with Talking Book Services in Mississippi? If you or someone you know has a visual, physical, or print disability that prevents the reading of standard print books, give us a call toll-free at 1-800-446-0892. You can also ask for information on joining the MS Talking Books Friends group (Friends of Handicapped Readers) for National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled updates.

Happy Juneteenth!

Elisabeth Scott

Reference and Social Media Librarian

Americans have been celebrating Juneteenth since 1865; we rang in a new era when it became an official federal holiday in 2021. MLC's 2022 Stacks and Stories podcast episode celebrating the occasion touches on the history of Juneteenth National Independence Day, Mississippi's homegrown Freedom Day (the Eighth of May), and events in Mississippi for Juneteenth. But that was last year. This year we're focusing on Juneteenth as an opportunity to learn and to educate. We've put together a list of books that focus on Black history (including Juneteenth, of course) and the Black experience, many of them from a uniquely Mississippi angle. Get your TBR ready for a slew of great reads!

Meet MLC: Amanda Minor

Meet Amanda Minor, Library Consultant at the Mississippi Library Commission (MLC). Amanda works with public libraries across the state, providing advice and access to information and resources. Although she only began working at MLC in January, Amanda has already become heavily involved with agency work-life, like getting our new cookmobile project up and going. Amanda holds a bachelor's degree in History from the University of Arkansas at Monticello and a master's degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Southern Mississippi. She loves working at MLC because of the welcoming and positive work environment.

Amanda is a lifelong fan of libraries. She says, "Libraries are a unique institution in that their materials and services grow alongside their patrons. As a child, going to the school library was my favorite part of the school week. As a teen, I grew my love of reading with books from the public library. As a young adult, I spent countless hours in my college library studying and countless more working as a service clerk at my local public library. As an adult, I have worked as a high school librarian and now as a library consultant for MLC. My time spent working in public and school libraries has shown me exactly how important the materials and services libraries provide are to the communities they serve. Libraries are an indispensable community resource where people can connect with information, opportunities, and each other. I love that I have the opportunity to work with libraries and communities all over the state."

Unsurprisingly, Amanda also loves to read. Her favorite books are The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, and Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson. When she isn't busy working at MLC or discovering new books, she enjoys cooking, baking, traveling, genealogy, and spending time with friends, family and pets.

Come Work at the Library!

Have you ever dreamed of working at a library? This is your chance to work at the Mississippi Library Commission (MLC)!

Our mission is strengthening and enhancing libraries and library services for all Mississippians, through leadership, advocacy, and service. Our award-winning facility is located at the Research and Development Center in Jackson, just off Lakeland Drive and Ridgewood Road. We are home to the Mississippi Center for the Book, a Patent and Trademark Resource Center, and the Mississippi Talking Book Service for the Blind and Print Disabled. We also offer extensive reference and interlibrary loan services for Mississippians and library consulting services and network services for libraries and librarians across the state.

MLC is hiring a Grant Programs Coordinator to oversee the state and federal subgrants to library systems in the state. Duties include opening subgrants, receiving applications, awarding grants, reviewing requests for approval of reimbursements, communicating with directors, close out of awards and final reporting.
Preferred knowledge/experience in federal and state rules, fluent in Excel, attention to detail, good communication skills, and proactive work ethic needed to be successful. If interested, please email mslib@mlc.lib.ms.us. You can also apply directly with the State Personnel Board website here.

We can't wait to add you to our team. Email us today!

PR Isn't Hard When You Have a Library Card

All Arthur references aside, we'd like to wish a huge congratulations to MLC's PR Coordinator Kristina Kelly!

Happy (Belated) Birthday, Little Free Libraries!

Elisabeth Scott

Reference and Social Media Librarian

Small bookshelves on posts... that's all they are, really. These simple little structures have brought indescribable joy to millions of people worldwide since they started popping up in city neighborhoods and rural roads eleven years ago. We want to wish Little Free Library (LFL), the organization behind the "take a book, leave a book" philosophy, the very happiest of birthdays. Increased access to books is the very cornerstone of our mission. We think this fabulous nonprofit has hit the nail on the head and is a great partner for libraries.

Little Free Library 2.0 and Library Consultant and LFL Steward Shellie Zeigler

Punching up the Public Domain

Katie Gill

Cataloging Librarian

Every couple of days, I get an email from my good friend Jonathan Harker. He’s on a work trip right now, visiting Transylvania to help this Count out with a real estate deal. Things are getting weird—he’s pretty sure the Count doesn’t actually have any staff at his giant, crumbling castle? The Count threw Jonathan’s mirror out of a window and called it a “bauble to man’s vanity.” And there was also the part where the Count climbed down the side of the castle like a lizard.

Of course, I’m talking about the book Dracula, by Bram Stoker. But the mention of emails might have thrown people off. Dracula via email? I subscribe to an email newsletter called “Dracula Daily” which emails you the text of Dracula as it happens in real-time. Dracula is an epistolary novel, written in letters and diary entries. With Dracula Daily, you get the May 5th entry of Dracula on May 5th, the May 12th entry on May 12th, and so on. It’s a new way to look at this iconic text that's only possible because Dracula is in the public domain.

The public domain consists of creative works that do not have any intellectual property rights attached. This means that the works can be reproduced, remixed, or reworked without having to pay any rights-holders or wade through any copyright quagmire. The American copyright system is VERY complex, but to paint an incredibly broad stroke, a work is under copyright for the lifetime of the author plus seventy years.

And in my opinion? That’s a huge bummer.

Because you don't have to pay anybody to rework something in the public domain, those stories are ripe for reinterpretation. You could focus on a minor character in the original text, as Geraldine Brooks does in March, which focuses on the absent father of the March sisters in Little Women. You could reinvent the text for a modern audience. The main crux of The Secret Garden, a story of a girl who learns to love nature and flourishes as a person, still holds value today, but the phonetic dialogue and dated references of the time might be a bit too much for a young reader. The Secret Garden on 81st Street by Ivy Noelle Weir and Amber Padilla takes the structure of the novel and sets it in modern day New York. You could write a sequel to the original text or put it in a new genre entirely: Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James does both, as a sequel to Pride and Prejudice turns into a murder mystery shortly through the book.

You don’t even have to keep the text itself but can instead rework the book into something new. There are plenty of classic texts adapted into graphic novels. The Secret Garden on 81st Street is one, but if you’re in the mood for something more adult? There’s Frankenstein, adapted by horror manga legend Junji Ito. You could take the text and rework it into a film. The past few years have been banner years for Dracula adjacent movies: The Invitation, Renfield, Hotel Transylvania: Transformania, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and Monster High: The Movie all benefit from Dracula’s public domain status.

And if you want? You can get even more unconventional with it. One of my favorite public domain reworkings is Rhythm Action Gatsby, a video game that re-interprets The Great Gatsby the way it’s meant to be: a two minute minigame that you can play in your computer browser.

These works aren’t cheap cash-grabs made to tie into an existing property. By reworking the text without fear of censure or fines, authors can bring the original work into a new conversation. The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys examines the very white, very British world of Jane Eyre through a post-colonial lens. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard uses two minor characters from Hamlet to explore concepts like the intersection of art and life. Both works received critical acclaim and have entered the literary canon themselves, to the point where students study them in high school or college. To that point, both were in my AP English curriculum.

So next time January 1 rolls around, why not look at what new works are entering the public domain? Every year, on that day, the Duke University Center for the Study of the Public Domain celebrates Public Domain Day and lists the notable works entering the public domain—here's a link to 2023's offerings. Who knows: maybe you’ll find inspiration for your next great novel, horror film, or two minute browser based rhythm game within their contents.