BARD stands for Braille and Audio Reading Download. It is a free service from NLS that allows patrons to download books and magazines in digital braille or audio.

All About BARD - a simple audio guide to getting started downloading books.

The Many Faces of BARD (opens a Zoom link) - a monthly one-hour patron program presented on the second Thursday of each month and hosted by NLS. The program takes library patrons on a tour of one aspect of BARD. Learn about the topic of the month or bring your own questions about BARD and get them answered directly by NLS. Note this program is presented as a Zoom web conference. The link takes you to a Zoom program. You can join by using the Zoom link or telephone, by calling 1-669-245-5252.

• Note, upon connecting, participants will be placed in a virtual waiting room until the program begins. When they enter the room, they will be on mute, and they should remain on mute unless the host calls upon them to speak. At that time, they may unmute by using Alt-A from a computer or star 6 if dialing in by phone.

Due to publisher copyright restrictions the audio books and magazines available for download through BARD have to be put into a special format for playback. Due to issues with security and such a software-based audio computer player is not available at this time. Therefore BARD audio books and magazines can only be played on a library provided or a 3rd-party approved digital talking book player or by using the BARD Mobile app.

As long as you have braille display attached to your computer or mobile device you can read braille downloaded books and magazines on your computer or mobile device without restrictions. For more specifics see the Using a Braille Display section on this page

To use BARD, go online from a computer Web Browser and sign up for the service at https://nlsbard.loc.gov. You will need to have an email address.

• Select the link to the BARD application instructions. From the BARD application instructions page select Link to BARD application for individuals. You will be presented with a drop-down list of network libraries. Choose your library from the list and then select the Submit button.
• Fill in all of the information in the application. Note that the field labeled “Please select the type of player you will be using” is for users of 3rd party talking-book players and/or braille notetakers. You do not need to select anything from this list, unless you want to add one of these 3rd party players to read your materials initially. Submit your application.
• Once your application is processed by your network library, you will be e-mailed a temporary password. You must login to BARD, and change your password to a permanent one before you can use BARD.
• A permanent password for BARD is a minimum of 8 characters and uses a mixture of letters and numbers only. Please DO NOT use any special characters (!,#,%,*,&,@,^,-) in your password. This may cause issues.

From your device open a web browser (Chrome or Safari) and go to - nlsbard.loc.gov.

• Select the link to the BARD application instructions. From the BARD application instructions page select Link to BARD application for individuals. You will be presented with a drop-down list of network libraries. Choose your library from the list and then select the Submit button.
• Fill in all of the information in the application. Note that the field labeled “Please select the type of player you will be using” is for users of 3rd party talking-book players and/or braille notetakers. You do not need to select anything from this list. Submit your application.
• Once your application is processed by your network library, you will be e-mailed a temporary password. You must login to BARD, using a web browser and change your password before logging into BARD Mobile.

The amount of books and magazines that your device (or flash drive) can hold depends on the amount of storage space and the length of the recording, which determines that amount of space it takes up. The rule for space is that for every 1 hour of audio recorded you need 10 MB of space. This means an average length recording of 14 hours takes 140 MB of space to store. For a typical mobile device with 16 GB of space (GB is 1000 times larger than an MB) you have room for approximately 1600 hours of audio or roughly 114 average length books.

If you can't find your downloads, you may want to designate where they go. These MP3 audio files and YouTube videos describe how to set your download folder from BARD for the the 3 major web browsers, Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer

• Chrome - MP3 audio - YouTube video 
• Firefox - MP3 audio - YouTube video 
• Internet Explorer - MP3 audio - YouTube video

There are two ways to reset your password:

1. To reset your password yourself. Resetting your password yourself is easy.:
   • Open the BARD login page and click the Reset your BARD password here link.
   • On the reset your lost password page, type the email address you to login to your BARD account in the Email Address field, then click the Submit button.

   • BARD will send you an email with a link that will redirect you back to the BARD website, where you can create a new password. The link will expire in one hour.

     Note - there is now a button called Show/Hide password, which appears as an eye shape, following the confirmation field on the create a new password page. By default, everything written in the password fields is hidden. If, however, you would like to be able to see what is being typed in the password fields, the Show/Hide button can be toggled in order to show what is being typed.

2. If resetting your password yourself does not work, we can reset it for you. Give us a call (984-236-1100) or email us (ncabls@dncr.nc.gov) and you'll be sent a temporary one-time password so that you can log in and change it. Follow the instructions and you'll be back on BARD quickly.

What has happened is that at some point the password was saved in the box and BARD keeps remembering it. To stop this from happening you have to clear out this cached information from the browser you use. The following MP3 audio files and YouTube videos explain and show you how to do this by each of the 3 major browsers.

• Chrome - MP3 audio - YouTube video 
• Firefox - MP3 audio - YouTube video 
• Internet Explorer - MP3 audio - YouTube video 

In Internet Explorer you need to go into the Settings then Internet Options. Find the Advanced tab and navigate the tree view with the Tab key. Arrow down to find the section called Accessibility. Arrow down until you find an option that says "Play system sounds". Set this to On by pressing the space bar to toggle it on and off. Then use the Tab key to go to Apply and press Enter. This will apply your settings and set System Sounds to On.

Login to BARD

Log in to the web site https://nlsbard.loc.gov by entering your NLS username (email address) and password. After login, you will be on the BARD main page. 

Search BARD

You can search the most recently added books, the most popular books, or by title, author, subject, or keyword. You can search for magazines by title or by recently added issues. Each different section or search choice is marked with heading markers for screen readers.

1. The simplest option is to enter the author’s name, title of a book, etc. into the box labeled “Search the Collection”. This will do a keyword search on what you enter in the box.
2. Scroll the list of results or select the hyperlinked text at the top of the results to go to a particular set of results indicated by the matches you have made.
3. Find the title you want to download from the results list.
4. Click or select the link to the title. This will be after the description and labeled in the format “Download TitleOfBook DB######”.

Download the Book

The action of downloading a book (or magazine) from BARD involves telling your web browser to Save it someplace on your computer. The web browser you have will determine what you want to do. For more help check out the helpful information section on locating your downloads.

This assumes you are using Safari web browser to search BARD. To change where it downloads files, using keyboard shortcuts, do the following:

1. Open Safari.
2. Press Command-Comma to bring up Preferences.
3. Press VO-Home or VO-Shift-Up Arrow to go to the toolbar.
4. Press VO-Shift-Down Arrow to interact with the toolbar.
5. Press VO with the Left or Right Arrow until you find General, and then press VO-Space to select it.
6. Press VO-Shift-Up Arrow to stop interacting with the toolbar.
7. Press VO-Right Arrow until you reach the file Download Location pop-up button.
8. Press VO-Space to open the pop-up menu, up or down arrow to Downloads, and press VO-Space to select it. Now anything you download will go to your Downloads folder.

Note, from these options, you can choose to automatically open "safe" downloads. This will then make it so your books will be unzipped automatically.
 

New to downloading books? Want to do it better? These tips should help you to play books and use your digital talking book player more effectively.

Playing a Book on your Flash Drive

Plug the cartridge or flash drive in and the book will start to play. To stop the book, push the Play/Stop button. If there is more than one book on a cartridge you can use the bookshelf.

Using the Bookshelf

To access the bookshelf press and hold the Play/Stop button for 5 seconds. You will hear a beep and a voice announce “Bookshelf” and the number of books on the flash drive or cartridge. Use the RW and FW keys to locate the book you want to read. Push the Play/Stop key again to begin playing the book. The player will only announce “bookshelf” if there is more than one book on the flash drive or cartridge.

New to downloading books? Want to do it better? These steps should help you unzip BARD books and magazines better so that you can play them. For those who are less technically inclined the library has tested a way to put a book onto a cartridge or flash drive in a simple direct way.

1. Plug the cartridge or flash drive into a USB port on your computer.
2. Select a book from BARD by clicking or selecting the link to the book.
3. If you use Internet Explorer to download your books when prompted select the “Save” button
   • From the next screen or prompt, select My Computer from the “Save in” dropdown box
   • Select the drive named “Removable disk”
   • Click or select the “Save” button at the bottom of the window
   • The book file will now be saved to the cartridge or flash drive
4. If you use Firefox to download your books you will need to set it to ask you where to save files
   • This can be set by going into the “Tools” – “Options” – “Main” area. On this screen there is an area that says “Save files to”
   • Click or select the checkbox that says “Always ask me where to save files” to be prompted where to save the file
   • Click or select the “OK” button
   • Select a book from BARD by clicking or selecting the link
   • Select the “Save” button
   • A window will open asking where you want to save the file
   • From the next screen or prompt, select My Computer from the “Save in” dropdown box
   • Select the drive named “Removable disk”
   • Click or select the “Save” button at the bottom of the window
   • The book file will now be saved to the cartridge or flash drive
5. To make the book playable
   • Go to My Computer
   • Select the drive named “Removable disk”
   • Right click and select “Extract All…” or from the window select “File” then “Extract All…” The Extraction Wizard will open
   • Select the “Next” button
   • Select the “Next” button from the next screen. After a minute or two the area that says “Extracting…” will show a green progress bar
   • When the book is finished being extracted or unzipped it will now appear in its own folder labeled the same as the book
   • You can now delete the zip file of the book
6. Plug the cartridge or drive into your player and let it play

The wish list allows you to save things you find on BARD for later, to be downloaded. It's also a place where magazines and book series you subscribe to are placed for downloading as needed. There are two ways you can use the Wishlist:

1. As a place where you can put books or magazines you find on the BARD website that you don't want to download right then but can be saved for later downloading.
2. To search for items on BARD Mobile and then download them onto the BARD Mobile app. Note you can not download books or magazines to a mobile device directly from the BARD website. You have to use BARD Mobile on mobile devices.

Anything you add to your wish list from either BARD Mobile or the BARD website will show up on the wish list in either place. In this way BARD Mobile is connected to your BARD account on the website. 

For helpful information of how to use the Wishlist in BARD Mobile see Using The Wishlist on BARD Mobile

Your user profile is set to display both audio and braille titles by default. To find just braille titles from BARD search results, you can note that the link to the media of each type of item is always at heading 1, so you can easily find the book format you want. Audiobooks will be displayed first. Then above the list of audio titles, you will find a “Go to Braille” link which will let you jump over all of the audio titles and get right to the braille titles.

Occasionally audiobook users will accidentally downloaded braille books instead of audio and find that the book will not play in the NLS digital talking-book machine DTBM). To avoid this mistake, check the book number prefix before downloading. All narrated audiobooks have the letters DB (which stand for Digital Book) before the book number. All braille materials have BR (for braille) preceding the number. There may be an additional letter after the DB or BR denoting that the book is part of a special collection.

If you don’t have any interest in seeing audio titles, you can set your profile so that only braille titles are displayed. Here’s how:

1. After logging into BARD, press Enter on the “Update Account Settings” link, located about two-thirds of the way down the BARD main page under the heading Additional Links.
2. Find the Display Results combo box. This is the second form field on the Update Account Settings screen, and it's set to “Both” by default.
3. Press Alt-Down Arrow to open the combo box, arrow down to “Braille Only,” and press Enter.
4. Tab to the “Update” button, and press Enter.

Braille books and magazines are in zip files. Each zip file contains all the volumes of that title. So to read a braille book or magazine, download the title you want, unzip it to a folder, open the volume you want, and start reading. If you want to read your book on a device with a braille display such as a notetaker, copy the unzipped folder and move it to your notetaker and use its braille reader to enjoy your book. Yet another option is to use a notetaker that can log directly onto BARD. Download the braille title you want, and open the book or magazine into the default braille reader.

The NLS video "How to Read a Braille Book instructions" is a good place to start. It is on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cYkEbkgRwQ&t=33s

If you have questions on these or other BARD-related topics, you can email the NLS BARD support team at this address: NLSDownload@loc.gov
Happy downloading and reading!