"Parents teach you to love, laugh and run. But only by getting in touch with books do you discover that you have wings". Helen Hayes
The National Centre for the Spoken Book (CNLP) of the Italian Union of the Blind (UIC) was founded in 1957 with an important mission: to make the days of the blind and visually impaired less burdensome and to help the visually impaired study. In reality, its activities are aimed at a broader target group, which also includes all those who cannot approach reading in the traditional way, thus also dyslexics, dystrophics, the elderly and terminally ill.
For all these people in summer, the season of rest and holidays, it can be particularly important to be able to count on the company of a good book to listen to. In fact, the Centro nazionale del Libro Parlato, through its 13 offices throughout Italy, produces and distributes audio books, which it makes available to users absolutely free of charge.
The catalogue is very rich, we speak of no less than 55,661 books engraved on audiocassette or CD, ranging from fiction, non-fiction, history, philosophy, science, children's literature and many other genres. In addition to the recording of classics, space is given to new publications, bestsellers and texts that have won literary prizes. The audio books are recorded by professional, highly expressive readers, including actors and singers, such as Francesco De Gregori. There is also the possibility of recording works at the request of users such as, for example, school and university texts, handouts and notes, and locally the centres also record numerous magazines of national and local interest, such as 'Focus', 'Gente Mese', 'National Geographic', 'Airone' and many others.
All this thanks to the valuable and selfless cooperation of volunteer readers.
To use the Talking Book services, all you have to do is contact the relevant local centre, fill in a registration form with your personal data and the reason for your request (blindness, low vision, reading difficulties), and you can pick up the audio books in person or receive them directly at home. In the latter case, it should be emphasised that postal charges are waived, thus guaranteeing that the service is completely free of charge and thus fully accessible to all user groups.
In addition to the use of physical media (CDs and audiocassettes), which remain essential for the elderly and severely disabled, new technologies have now made it possible to access the Spoken Book catalogue via smartphones and tablets. In fact, the entire archive has been converted into MP3 files that can be downloaded from the www.uiciechi.it/servizi/lp/introlp.asp,
In addition, the National Speech Book Centre has joined the international consortium DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System), which is a standard enabling book indexing. Thanks to this type of technology, it becomes possible to consult paragraphs and chapters, moving freely from one part of the text to another.
The audiobook thus becomes usable in a new way, with a previously unknown character of interactivity, which makes the reading experience even richer and freer.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
'Books are mirrors: they reflect what we have inside'.
Jean-Paul Sartre
'Books were my birds and my nests, my pets, my barn and my countryside; the library was the world enclosed in a mirror; of a mirror it had the infinite depth, the variety, the unpredictability'.
Fabrizio Caramagna
'To read a book is not to leave the world, but to enter the world through another entrance'.
Dr. Carmelo Chines
Direttore responsabile
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