Ep. 207 Library Joy at the Colorado Talking Book Library

Sunshine and Stories Episode 207: Library Joy at the Colorado Talking Book Library 

Episode Summary:  
Kate Compton chats with Lorrie Spoering, the wonderfully passionate Reader Advisor Librarian from the Colorado Talking Book Library (CTBL). Lorrie shares how CTBL keeps the joy of reading alive for folks who can’t access traditional print—whether due to vision loss, dyslexia, or even paper allergies (yes, that’s a thing!). With a national connection and a treasure trove of audiobooks, players, Braille, and large print, CTBL is like a magical book genie—minus the lamp. And the best part? It’s all free! 

Outline:  

00:18 - Meet Lorrie Spoering  
01:43 - What is CTBL?  
03:57 - Helping someone get signed up
06:15 - What do patrons receive?  
07:23 - What are patrons looking for?
10:27 - What else should we know?  
14:14 - Outreach  
15:30 - Closing  

Resources:  

Colorado Talking Book Library 

CTBL Application 

To reach Lorrie Spoering with any questions about CTBL’s services, please email spoering_l@cde.state.co.us. 

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CSL projects like this one are funded in part by the Grants to States program administered by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services. The views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the Colorado State Library, Institute of Museum and Library Services, or the U.S. Government. 

Transcript

Sunshine & Stories podcast transcript for Episode 207

[Music] 

[00:06] 

Kate B: Welcome to Sunshine and Stories. 

Kate C: The podcast that shines a light on big ideas and bright moments in Colorado's public and school libraries. 

Kate B: Brought to you by the library development team at the Colorado State Library. 

[00:18]  

Kate C: Today on sunshine and stories, I have Lorrie Spoering, the patron services reader advisor librarian for Colorado Talking Book Library. Welcome, Lorrie. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your favorite part of your job at Talking Book Library? 

Lorrie: Sure, and well done on the last name, almost nobody gets it the first time. I won't ask you to try and spell them without looking at the screen though. So I am a patron services reader advisor Librarian, which is an extremely long name. We usually go by RA because that seems a lot easier for everybody. 

And so I've been here, actually my work adversary is tomorrow. It's been four years. And so I really, I love making sure that people don't ever lose the access to reading. We have a lot of elderly patrons who lose their sight later in life and think, you know, they've lost everything. They've lost a lot of independence, the ability to do a lot of their hobbies and so many of them were ferocious readers before they lost their sight that we make sure they don't skip a beat and get to continue doing all of that and it's really, extremely gratifying because we do get a lot of people who say, you know, you saved my life. I don't know what I would do. And I mean, I get it because I spend, you know, hours a day reading. So it's really wonderful to know that other people get to enjoy that. And when they think that they're losing a whole lot of things at once. 

[01:43] 

 Kate C: I love that. What a great mission. So tell me a little bit about talking book library. What is it that you do? Where are you? How do you, who do you serve? How do we find you, all those things? 

Lorrie: OK. Well, we're the talking book library for the state of Colorado, but we're part of a national federal program through the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled. And that's part of the Library of Congress. So we serve the entire country. Every single state has one of these libraries. We have them for our overseas residents and some of the outlying areas like Guam and Puerto Rico. What we do is we provide basically all the various reading services that you would get at a typical library for people who can no longer read typical print, and that's going to cover people who've lost their vision, people who are born blind, people with learning disabilities like dyslexia, even physical disabilities where you can't hold a book or there is an allergy where people can't touch paper. We cover just so many things. It's I like to describe it to people, If you can't like walk into a room and just pick up a book off a shelf and open it up and start reading. We're going to be somebody who can help you out. 

We cover so much more than just being blind because people will, even our patrons say, well, I'm not totally blind. It's like well, but your son, you know you've had vision loss and that's going to be something that's going to prevent you from being able to do that.  

We serve the entire state. We're located in Denver, but we reach every single corner of the state, every single county. And we have several thousand patrons, I believe at this point. 

We have hundreds of thousands of audiobooks, hundreds of thousands of large print books, hundreds of thousands of Braille books, as well as all of the equipment to play it on and to listen and to read. And it's all free of charge. And as long as you're qualifying resident with one of these disabilities and it's on our application. A long list of people who can confirm this, including librarians. 

As long as you're qualifying resident, you get the service for as long as you want it. Once you're part of our library, you don't ever have to re up. You don't have to pay fines or fees or anything like that. We are here to make sure that you don't lose access to books. 

[03:57] 

Kate C: What an amazing reach you have. So, I'm hearing you say, OK, if somebody qualifies... So say a librarian is at a school library. We have a lot of public librarians listening to this podcast. Somebody walks into their library and says, you know, I can't hold a book. I can't visually see print. I need help. What what's the next step for our library? 

Lorrie: OK. Well, we have applications, a lot of libraries have hold of them already because we send them out to a lot of people, but we also have them on our website. You can download them. They are fillable PDF's and basically it's just kind of right, signing off on this patron saying, you know, yes, I've talked to them, they have this disability, they need this help. We don't need medical records. We don't need assigned doctor's note. We just need somebody. (Sorry about that0 including a librarian, because librarians are very frequently the first people who encounter our patrons because they have either met them in public or these people have been coming to their library, so we really value librarians. Being able to sign off on this and be able to confirm these things. Once they do the application, it's got information about like what services they need either audio or large, print things like that. What kind of things they're interested in reading. They shoot it off to us and we set them all up. Everything goes to the United States Postal Service. 

This so nobody has to try and get down here like coming down from Craig or something to turn in a book and they're able to reach us by e-mail, by phone, tell us what they like, what they don't like, and we make sure everything goes out as easily as we can with the mail being kind of slow, especially going over the mountains in the winter. But we do move through real quick. 

Make sure everything is done and people are always able to tweak what they like. If they were really into Westerns for a while and then get tired of them, we can stop sending Westerns. We don't, none of this is written in stone. We're happy to help out, and we're also happy to help out librarians who may need to be an intermediary. Either the person doesn't have access to being able to call us or e-mail us, or they feel more comfortable with having their librarian do it. We're happy to do any sort of thing that's going to make it best for people in the community and best for the people who are trying to support their community. 

[06:15] 

Kate C: So you're mailing books that are in Braille, even the equipment to listen to audio books too. 

Lorrie: Yep, Yep. We have a couple different machines. They look almost like the old type players we had in the 80s, except they're completely digital. They we all of our books come on what we call cartridges. But you can call them anything you want. A lot of people call them tapes because we used to send those and they all go through the mail. We have as well in it like we do have print Braille as in those big volumes that people are used to seeing with the raised bumps. We also have a Braille e-reader which allows people to download rail files right on to this little compact reader, and it'll stream the dots across it so you can actually carry that around. That can fit thousands of books. We send everything. Nothing needs a deposit. Nothing needs to be paid for. A lot of our patrons, as they are elderly or disabled, are often on a fixed income and so we don't want them to have to find that extra  

[07:23] 

Kate C: Amazing. So what are most people seeking from you? Are most people asking for audiobooks and what kind of books? Or is it mostly Braille? What are, what are people looking for? 

Lorrie: At this point, it's going to be mostly audiobooks, because again, a large amount of our patrons are people who went blind later in life, and so they don't know Braille. They, some will learn Braille. We've actually had a lot of older patrons decide to learn Braille later on. We do have some patrons who've been blind much longer and learned Braille. There was a gap socially, when, I say about 30 ish years ago, maybe 40 where children who were born blind weren't taught Braille, because of the access, like the large access to audiobooks. But that's been, that's been fixed in the last like decade, couple decades. So we have kids learning Braille from birth from as soon as they can start reading because you need to know punctuation, you need to know capitalization, things like that. And so we're seeing, I want to say we're seeing a little bit more of an uptick in especially the Braille readers, we have a really wonderful place called the Colorado Center for the Blind in Littleton, and they attract students from all over the world, actually to learn how to have an independent life as a blind person. And they'll get here and order their e-reader. And so we're able to play those. Then they go off into the various parts of the country with their E readers. And so we've been seeing a lot more of that, which is super fun. Because it means that they're out there showing people that Braille is a viable and important sort of language to have on deck instead of just, you know, on an elevator occasionally. Is where it's something that is really, really valuable now, and so it's going to. I would still say more audio, but Braille is starting to catch up. I think a lot and we do a lot of large prints. We have the largest large print collection in Colorado, so it's going to move pretty well. 

[09:24] 

 Kate C: And what trends are you seeing? Are people into Westerns? Do they like, romance? What are people pulling? 

Lorrie: Westerns are huge again with our more senior population. They love a western, especially our older gentleman.  

What's always been, surprised me is Amish. I didn't know that was a genre, and still I, until I started volunteering here. Actually, when I was in grad school, like, I didn't even know. They wrote books about the Amish. Like, besides, like, nonfiction. It's a big one, lots of Amish books.  

We've actually, a lot more of our patrons have started getting into book clubs and like listening for suggestions on NPR and things like that. So we're getting a lot more of, like, the really, like, big books that are people are talking about. I just had another patron call for Go As a River. When Where the Crawdad Sing came out as a movie, suddenly everybody called about that, so we get a lot of that. But we've had a lot more book clubs recently with a lot of really interesting stuff that they're talking about. So that's been fun to see. 

[10:27] 

Kate C: I love it. Well, what else do you feel like a public or school librarian should know about how to share this resource with their communities, or anything else that you think is important for our community to know? 

Lorrie: I would say that a lot of people think that because our patron base is largely older, people have lost their vision later in life. They think we don't have anything for anyone else. 

Our youngest patron is 3, our oldest patron I believe, is about 104. We have books for every single person on the planet. We have just like a typical library. We're going to try and make sure everybody has access to all of the things they want to read. We have picture books, we have really cool Braille books, we call them Twin Vision because they have a piece of vellum that lays over the picture book that has Braille on it. So a sighted person and a blind person can read together whether it's a child who is blind or a parent who's blind, we have just an incredible collection. We get things pretty quickly that are popular, so people don't have to get on a waiting list. That's actually a really cool thing is that we can have as many copies of any audio book that we want. Unlike a Public Library that might have to, you know, only buy licenses for two, everybody in the entire country and the service could get the same book at the same time and we would be able to do it so. So especially for like school librarians or anybody working, especially with younger kids, is we can get a hold of a lot of those books that they might need for school. I've sent out a lot of Great Gatsby. I've sent a lot of To Kill a Mockingbird and stuff like that for kids who they're reading lists and things like that. We have an app for smartphones and tablets that has been really helpful I know in classrooms. Where in some of the TBI classrooms where they're able to set up, so all of the kids can sit with their tablet and listen and follow along and be able to interact a little better than waiting on, you know, trying to turn on one player in the middle of the room and everybody can hear at the same time sort of thing.  

We try, we've been branching out, doing more with summer reading, which we had a really great successful summer this year. One of our other librarians, Judy fronts that and she's done an amazing job. We're trying to get more involved to, to get reach out to more people and get them more involved in the library. And find a way to like make it more interactive than just waiting on the mail to come for their cartridges, and so we do appreciate anybody telling us things that they're interested in what they want to do with what they think they would like to see from us because really like at this point, who knows what the future is for anything and anyone. Might as well tell us what you would like and we can see if it'll ever happen because we want it to. 

[13:22] 

Kate C: A good message for everyone, might as well ask for it right at this point, we might as well try and see what happens. 

Lorrie: Exactly, exactly. It's like, especially when you're talking about people with disabilities so often it's like there's a lot of shutdown. And a lot of resistance to access. And if we if we find something where we're not being accessible or we're not…  We just want everything. Just open door, full open door, get everybody everything. Because the important part of our job is making sure that everybody has equitable access because that that's what reading is, is access to all thoughts and feeling and lands and everything like that. 

[14:04] 

Kate C: Another good reminder, in our current times that we can we can escape to books and other worlds, too. 

Lorrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

[14:14] Kate C 

And so do you all have resources if public libraries or school libraries wanted to have something in their space to kind of promote and get more people involved? 

Lorrie: Absolutely. I mean, I have a lot of, I have some marketing things that we can send, but also we're happy; we do have several public libraries, but we're happy to discuss with any school or Public Library having a demonstration package where we send them a player, we send them some cartridges so they can show either parents or kids or you know caregivers anything that just kind of get them educated on it. A lot of the time, our best advertisement is people who don't necessarily need the service finding out about us and then telling somebody else or remembering that their aunt knows, you know, their bridge partner has been having vision problems and stuff. So we're just happy to just to facilitate that sort of conversation. 

You can give them a package where you know, if they have some kids that are coming in to learn about disabilities, hey, we'd be happy to like, you know, set you up with this or, you know, be able to zoom with your kids or it.  

We'd love to talk to library staff. We, I, I've been on so many library staff calls and I love talking to librarians. So anybody ever wants to talk to us, call us. We're really excited to. 

[15:29]  

Kate C: I love it. Well, thank you so much for your time, Lorrie. I really appreciate all of the work you're doing to make reading accessible to everyone in Colorado and also for sharing what you know today. 

Lorrie: Oh, I could do it so much longer. It's the joke, is if somebody will stay still long enough, I'll just go. Nicole, our director, says you just wind Lorrie up and she keeps going. I can't help it. It's, I got to work here as a volunteer when I was in grad school. And then I got this job a couple years later. And I'm like, I just do this. This is all I want to do is just tell people and I love, love making sure that people get to read so I'll do it as long as anybody will listen too. 

[16:09] 

Kate C: It's very clear how passionate you are and I love that. That's very fun to be around. So, I appreciate you and have a great rest of your day and thanks again. 

Lorrie: Thank you. 

[16:18] Closing  

Kate B: That's our sunshine and stories for today, y'all. 

Kieran: If you want to hear even more about what other Colorado folks are up to in their libraries, check out libraries learn.org. For all our past and future learning opportunities. 

Suzi: This podcast is offered at no cost to listeners. Thanks to the time, effort and dedication of CSL library development consultants, as well as our state library colleagues and all our volunteer guests from across the field. 

Kate C: CSL projects like this one are funded in part by the grants to states program, which is administered by the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services. 

Polly:  The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the Colorado State Library Institute of Museum and Library Services or the US government. 

All: Thanks for joining us. We'll catch you next time. 

[Music] 

[17:14]