Alerts Available to Purchase

Talking Newspaper Enterprises Ltd of Unit 3, Station Road Industrial Estate, Heathfield, East Sussex TN21 8DB (04352–5422) offers public libraries an important new service of potentially great advantage to visually impaired and print handicapped people. This organisation is a wholly‐owned subsidiary of the national charity Talking Newspaper Association of the United Kingdom, which already sends out taped versions of national newspapers and magazines by post to people with impaired vision who pay a nominal annual subscription. The new scheme makes 90‐minute cassettes of recordings available to public libraries at only 75p each and these cassettes can be lent free to “readers”. Copyright clearance has been negotiated. Daniela Bayfield, the General Manager, will send a list of the very wide range of papers and magazines regularly recorded and full details of the service to any interested librarian. There is also a free information cassette but this is really not worth bothering with as it only says in words what is written on the descriptive sheets and list of journals. East Sussex County Library is currently conducting a pilot study to assess the likely demand for the service, with 19 titles, selected from the 100 or more available, supplied to 21 branches and central libraries throughout the county.