Would you like to help with a project?When I first started compiling the list of novels set between 500 and 1600 AD that is now the extensive online bookstore medieval-novels.com my intent was to discover which of the books was accessible in a format I could read. Little did I know that my former partner in the venture was so darn good at finding these books! I had envisioned a few hundred.. now the site is at well over a thousand! And I now know that number will double at least.
"That all may read" is the slogan of the National Library Service, the U.S. government agency that produces books for people who cannot read standard print. They have over the decades provided innumerable blind, partially sighted, dyslexic, and other print impaired people with an approximation of the access most people have to books from their local library. The books are on LP records, audio cassettes, in Braille and more recently audio downloads. I can tell you with all candor that had I not had these books when I found out I was losing my vision 31 years ago I don't think I would have adjusted so readily or easily. I was after all a double English major and book freak.
I started adding notations to the listings in medieval-novels.com last evening... what a job! The information I need is minimal... just the NLS book number for any book on my site that is also on theirs. This number is readily available to anyone, not just library patrons, on the NLS web site... just search the online catalog. I can do this.. but it will take a long, long time and not be available for the multitude of people who need the information for that same long time.
That is why yesterday I sent out an appeal to other lovers of books and specifically historical fiction to ask if they might help. If a few dozen people took up the project with only a dozen books each, the whole job would be done faster. Remeber the saying, "many hands make light work."
Here is the entire "job description":
1. Take the titles of as few or as many books on medieval-novels.com as you wish. (Let me know which you chose.)
2. Look them up in the catalog at http://www.loc.gov/nls
3. Email me the list with author, title and the book numbers you find for RC (cassettes), BR (Braille) and/or DB (downloadable audio).
Hey presto! Fini!
I will reward you... anyone who works on this can have a PDF copy of my own historical novel, An Involuntary King. If you do a lot of books, you can even have the print copy with my earnest thanks.
Just drop me a note.. hawthorne@nanhawthorne.com works best I think. And I cannot tell you how much help this will be to me and to others like me who hunger for the same books you enjoy reading! To share how useful this information will be, I have already put my request in for "The Prince of Darkness", a Justin de Quincy mystery that I had wanted to read but not realized was available through NLS! I can't tell you how liberating that feels.
My thanks! I look forward to hearing from and working with you!
Nan Hawthorne
hawthorne@nanhawthorne.com
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