Joel Håkansson Henry Larsson Björn Westling

Contact information  TPB – The Swedish Library of Talking Books and Braille, Stockholm  Joel Håkansson  Henry Larsson  Björn Westling

Purpose of the presentation  To propose cooperation in the braille music field, concerning: Purchase/production Interlibrary loans Future sharing of catalogue data  To present and promote a proposal to establish a new embosser format: PEF

Braille music in Sweden – a short background  Producers: TPB since 1980 (governmental authority) The Society for the Blind – 1954 Book foundation of the Blind Tomtebodaskolan

A short background (cont.)  Differences in producing braille notes (which are the differences?): German style English style American style  Deposition of braille music at DBB in 1990 (the Danish National Library for the Blind) Limited request by Swedish borrowers for braille music from Denmark

Today’s situation  DBB is responsible for supplying Swedish borrowers with braille music (a limited amount of borrowers)  A total production at TPB of 42 titles with braille music – since 1980  Two producers of braille music in Sweden (commercial companies)  Braille music users in Sweden: 30 among school pupils  A small increase in the demand for braille music (at TPB)  A possibly large potential for braille music (unknown) Intention to investigate the needs

Public procurements of production  No in-house production of Braille or other media at TPB  Commercial companies are contracted for several years at a time.  Effects: Lowered production costs over the years. TPB has a need of production systems that are standardised. It is essential that the Braille embosser file gives the same result regardless of where and when it is really embossed. Example: a Braille embosser file will be produced at a certain location by a certain company, stored at TPB and eventually embossed in a different location by a different company.

Future Braille Service  TPB’s goal is to provide a better service for our braille users by continuing to incorporate new material into our collection and by developing a more efficient distribution system.

A more efficient distribution system  Distribution via internet Feasible from a technical standpoint A new distribution system will launch in April File format?  “On Demand” services

More material to offer  Increasing the rate of production Procurement, while successful, stresses some aspects of braille production Embossing a book that was produced somewhere else is not a trivial task Shared procurement in the EU  Increase co-operation between braille libraries Sharing of catalogue data Common file format for sharing

How to increase co-operation?  Sharing of catalogue data  Common file format for sharing Internet distribution “On demand” services Procurement Co-operation

Common Exchange Format  Braille music is very expensive to produce  The braille code used in musical notation is understood across nations  With a common braille exchange format, this material can be shared in electronic form with anyone

Reasons for developing a common exchange format  To facilitate ordering of additional braille copies at a later point in time  To ensure readability of material many years from now, e.g. when investing in an digitizing effort, the result must be persistently readable  To reduce costs for embossing  To enable easy file sharing (in general, not just braille music) across regions having different embosser settings or software

Portable Embosser Format  The Portable Embosser Format (PEF) is a data format for representing braille books, accurately and unambiguously; regardless of language, location, embosser settings, braille code and computer environment. It can be used for braille embossing and archiving anywhere in the world, no matter where nor how it was produced.  PEF builds on XML, Unicode and Dublin Core. Three well known, widely used and reliable technologies.

What about ASCII braille?  Problems with ASCII braille It is insufficiently defined It can be interpreted differently depending on software/embosser It depends on an alternate interpretation of regular ASCII characters, but provides no means of how to differentiate one interpretation from another. A stray file that has been taken out of context or transferred from one computer to another can be very difficult to make sense of, even for a skilled transcriber Common characters like.?()+$% and # render different braille patterns depending on embosser and/or software locale. The reality is that one can’t send an ASCII braille file to an embosser without braille knowledge A user keeping a collection of ASCII braille files cannot rely on embedded metadata when searching or organizing, such as one can with for example mp3-files. In fact, no additional information whatsoever can be attributed to an ASCII file.

Why use PEF?  A PEF file provides metadata that can be used for tracing, tracking, organizing and searching  PEF is a proper file format, defined in a publicly available standard.  There is never any doubt about how to interpret or use the contents of a PEF file  A PEF file can be shared with anyone in the world  Publishing and republishing can be achieved quickly and easily, without worrying about embosser or software settings

Using PEF today  Software for reading, writing and embossing is available in the Daisy Pipeline. Using this software, you can: emboss a PEF file input an ASCII braille file and get a PEF file as output input a PEF file and get an ASCII braille file as output convert between different ASCII braille formats  Package file prototype

Package file prototype  It enables instant embossing of PEF files on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms  It contains braille, embossing software and a fully accessible web interface where you can: find information about the publication set up the target embosser emboss the publication, in its entirety or a selection of pages  Package file is suitable for internet distribution

Standardization  Widespread support for PEF will not happen until PEF is an international concern and/or a Daisy standard  If your organization thinks that PEF is a good idea and wants to support it, let us know  Read more about PEF on the Daisy website or contact for more information

What we propose you to do  Talk to us about: TPB purchase/production by your organisation Interlibrary loans Sharing of catalogue data Possibilities to introduce PEF in your production systems Software demonstration