In this issue:
- Letter from CELA’s Executive Director
- Awards update!
- On our blog!
- Apply now for the TD Summer Reading Club Accessibility Award
- Books to promote at your library
- Webinars for you
- Featured title for adults: The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters
- Top five books
- Featured title for kids: Snakes: What Do Cobras, Pythons, and Anacondas Get Up to All Day?
- Top five for kids
- Top five for teens
- Service tip: Canada Post Literature for the Blind
- Holiday hours
- Stay connected!
Letter from CELA’s Executive Director
As summer wraps up, so, too, do libraries’ summer book club programs for kids. We know how much energy libraries put into offering engaging and inclusive programming and we want to honour that. The TD Summer Reading Club Accessibility Award recognizes outstanding effort in offering accessible programming for those libraries participating in the TDSRC. This year the submission deadline is September 23, 2024. The winning library will receive $2,000 prize money which can be used to continue to support and promote accessible program. Learn more on our website.
While our newsletter was on hiatus for the summer, our team was not. We’ve been busy ingesting new books, including over 400 French braille books, and creating new webinars and updating others to offer fresh content to our readers and member libraries. Learn more about our new webinars on our blog or by visiting our Webinars page.
In addition to our own webinars, we are spreading the word about accessibility with a number of partners. The EI Institute is hosting a series of webinars including Accessible Collections 101, which will be presented by CELA and NNELS staff.
And we were delighted that Lindsay Tyler, CELA’s Senior Manager presented at the IFLA seminar in Washington dedicated to libraries serving people with print disabilities. Her talk addressed integrating equitable access in the mainstream library system.
As we head into the major literary awards season, I want to thank you for the work you do to promote accessible formats and equitable access to your users and your communities. We always appreciate your support.
Happy Reading,
Laurie Davidson, Executive Director
Awards update!
Crime Writers of Canada (CWC) recently announced the Winners of the 2024 CWC Awards of Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing. CWC recognizes the best in mystery, crime, suspense fiction and crime nonfiction by Canadian authors, including citizens abroad and new residents.
Congratulations to these recent award winners whose books are available in our collection:
Best First Crime Novel: The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
Howard Engel Award for Best Crime Novel Set in Canada: Wild Hope by Joan Thomas
Whodunit Award for Best Traditional Mystery: The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose
Best Juvenile/YA Crime Book: Funeral Songs for Dying Girls by Cherie Dimaline
The Hugo Awards are one of science fiction and fantasy’s most prestigious literary awards. The 2024 winners include:
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh for Best Novel,
Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher for Best Novella
and Imperial Radch by Ann Leckie for Best Series.
For more information about literary awards visit our Awards page.
On our blog!
“We’ve always had training for libraries on the basics of offering CELA services. But as technology changes and our services evolve, we’ve found there is new information to share, and libraries have a real interest in a broad variety of topics and training approaches,” says Rachel Breau, CELA’s Manager of Member services. “We want our member libraries to always feel prepared to support their users with print disabilities.”
Read our blog to learn how our Member Services team is updating some of our core training programs and incorporating feedback from participants.
Apply now for the TD Summer Reading Club Accessibility Award
As summer wraps up, it’s time to transition from summer reading clubs to back to school. But before you pack away those summer memories, we encourage all libraries that participated in the TD Summer Reading Club to apply for the TDSRC Accessibility Award.
CELA and the TD Summer Reading Club offer an annual award for excellence in accessible English or French programming. The award celebrates the creativity of library staff who engage children with disabilities in their TD Summer Reading Club by:
- making their reading activities, events and programs inclusive for children of all abilities
- connecting readers with TD Summer Reading Club titles in audio, e-book or braille formats
- promoting community partnerships that strengthen access to materials and programming for children with disabilities
- increasing library staff awareness of accessibility best practices.
CELA offers a $2,000 cash prize to the winning library. The winner is announced in the spring of the following year at either the English or French award ceremony, depending on the language of the winning application.
You can find more information, including eligibility criteria, on the Accessibility Award page. To apply, complete the Accessibility Award application form. You can also send supplementary information to members@celalibrary.ca. This can include videos, photos, newspaper articles, statistics, testimonials, and more.
The deadline to apply is September 24, 2024. Good luck!
Books to promote at your library
Are you looking to promote some new accessible titles in your newsletters, social media feeds, or as part of an in-branch display?
Download our printable book list or forward the link to your colleagues.
Find the new list, updated monthly and featuring links to new books in our collection, on our For Libraries page.
Webinars for you
We host a series of webinars on Zoom to help users access CELA services, to stay up to date on new technologies and to learn more about accessible reading.
On the Webinars for you page, you will find upcoming webinars. On that same page you will find links to other CELA video resources available on our YouTube channel.
Navigating the CELA website with JAWS or NVDA
This webinar will provide participants with a comprehensive guided tour of the CELA webpage using screen reader navigation with JAWS or NVDA. Through a live, described demonstration, participants will learn helpful tips and strategies regardless of whether they are beginners, or advanced users of the website.
The demonstration will show:
- Essential JAWS/NVDA hotkeys used for quicker or more efficient navigation.
- How to conduct a simple and advanced search, refine the search results, and then how to get a title from that search.
- How to browse the collection using links such as New titles, Recommended reading, Top 5 picks and Awards.
- Set search preferences and much more.
Select the link below to register for this webinar:
Ask us! Come chat with CELA staff and have your questions answered
This hour long interactive conversation gives CELA users an opportunity to ask questions related to using CELA’s library services. We encourage you to bring your questions and learn from CELA staff, as well as share experiences with other CELA patrons in the audience. This Q&A aims to support how you access the books, magazines and newspapers in CELA’s multiple format collections for people with print disabilities.
Select the link below to register for this conversation:
Envoy Connect: An accessible and affordable audiobook player
In May 2023, CELA launched our new service which uses the Envoy Connect audiobook player to read books in CELA’s collection. This webinar will provide a basic introduction to the Envoy Connect player, a portable, affordable and easy-to-use device. This webinar is for anyone who prefers listening to audiobooks using self-contained players with a tactile interface, rather than through computers, smartphones or tablets.
This webinar will cover:
- Background and context to explain how and why the Envoy Connect became an option for accessing audio books.
- Basics of the Envoy Connect Player: what it is, how it works, etc.
- How to manage books on the Envoy Connect with the CELA Connect software.
Where to find learning resources or purchase the player.
Select the link below to register for this webinar:
Thursday Oct 24 1:00-2:00pm EDT
Accessing CELA using a Victor Reader Stream DAISY Player
Do you own a Humanware Victor Reader Stream? Are you considering getting one to access reading materials from CELA? Join us for this hour-long webinar about how this versatile device lets you read CELA’s books and magazines in audio and e-text formats. This webinar is for new Victor Stream users or those interested in learning new tips. By attending this webinar, you will learn about:
- General features of the Victor Stream, and what’s new with the latest model
- Configuring the device for use with CELA
- How to navigate and manage your Direct to Player bookshelf
- Reading a title and playback options
- How to find help in using the Victor Stream with CELA
Select the link below to register for this webinar:
Featured title for adults: The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters
The definitive biography of the most successful female broadcaster of all time—Barbara Walters—a woman whose personal demons fueled an ambition that broke all the rules and finally gave women a permanent place on the air, written by bestselling author Susan Page. Barbara Walters was a force from the time TV was exploding on the American scene in the 1960s to its waning dominance in a new world of competition from streaming services and social media half a century later.
She was not just a groundbreaker for women (Oprah announced when she was seventeen that she wanted to be Barbara Walters), but also expanded the big TV interview and then dominated the genre. By the end of her career, she had interviewed more of the famous and infamous, from presidents to movie stars to criminals to despots, than any other journalist in history. Then at sixty-seven, past the age many female broadcasters found themselves involuntarily retired, she pioneered a new form of talk TV called The View.She is on the short list of those who have left the biggest imprints on television news and on our culture, male or female. So, who was the woman behind the legacy?
In The Rulebreaker, Susan Page conducts 150 interviews and extensive archival research to discover that Walters was driven to keep herself and her family afloat after her mercurial and famous impresario father attempted suicide. But she never lost the fear of an impending catastrophe, which is what led her to ask for things no woman had ever asked for before, to ignore the rules of misogynistic culture, to outcompete her most ferocious competitors, and to protect her complicated marriages and love life from scrutiny. Page breaks news on every front—from the daring things Walters did to become the woman who reinvented the TV interview to the secrets she kept until her death. This is the eye-opening account of the woman who knew she had to break all the rules so she could break all the rules about what viewers deserved to know.
Read The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters by Susan Page.
Top five books
Most popular with our readers this month:
- Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?: A Novel by Nicci French, Mysteries and crime stories
- Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton, Biography
- The Whispers: A Novel by Ashley Audrain, Suspense and thrillers
- Pageboy: A Memoir by Elliot Page, Biography
- The Briar Club: A Novel by Kate Quinn, Suspense and thrillers
Featured title for kids: Snakes: What Do Cobras, Pythons, and Anacondas Get Up to All Day?
This audiobook features sound design and special effects to enhance your enjoyment of Snakes (A Day in the Life). Listen out for the rattle of rattlesnakes and snake-charming music! Set over 24 hours, meet rattlesnakes, vipers, and black mambas in this kids' nonfiction book by TikTok star and snake expert Christian Cave.
Journey around the world to follow the lives of these cold-blooded reptiles as they hunt, hide, and fight their way through their day. Biologist and conservationist Christian Cave tells the story of the world's most amazing venomous snakes in the style of a nature documentary, including gentle science explanations of topics such as camouflage and skin shedding that are perfect for future biologists. Witness incredible moments including: A paradise flying snake soaring through the air to escape a predator A king cobra defending her eggs from a mongoose A spider-tailed viper using its tail to catch birds! Packed with animal facts, Snakes (A Day in the Life) encourages kids to look at the roles these incredible legless predators play in ecosystems across the globe, and why it's important we protect them. A Macmillan Audio production from Neon Squid.
Read Snakes: What Do Cobras, Pythons, and Anacondas Get Up to All Day? by Christian Cave.
Top five for kids
Most popular with kids this month:
- The Ugly Place by Laura Deal, Multi-cultural fiction
- Abby and the Best Kid Ever The Baby-Sitters Club #116 by Ann M. Martin
- The Complete Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, Fantasy
- The Baby-Sitters Club Mystery #23: Abby and the Secret Society by Ann M. Martin, Mysteries and crime stories
- The Adventures of Hotsy Totsy by Clive Cussler, Adventure stories
Top five for teens
Most popular with teens this month:
- Hatchet: Hatchet Series, Book 1 by Gary Paulsen, Adventure stories
- Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass #1) by Sarah J. Maas, Adventure stories
- The Inheritance Games (Inheritance Games #1) by Jennifer Barnes, Suspense and thrillers
- The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings #1) by J. R. R. Tolkein, Fantasy
- The Hunger Games (Hunger Games #1) by Suzanne Collins, Science fiction
Service tip: Canada Post Literature for the Blind
Canada Post offers a free service to deliver literature to people who are blind or have low vision. CELA uses this service to send physical materials to patrons. Libraries can also use the service to return CDs to us. Simply indicate on the address label or package "Literature for the Blind Post Free" and send to:
Centre for Equitable Library Access
1929 Bayview Ave
Toronto, ON
M4G 3E8
You can learn more about this service on the Canada Post website. This is also a handy link to have if you need to discuss the program with any Canada Post employees.
Holiday hours
CELA and its Contact Center will be closed on Monday, September 3 for Labour Day and will resume usual hours on Tuesday, September 4.
We will also be closed on Monday, October 14 for Thanksgiving and will return to regular hours on Tuesday, October 15.
Enjoy your holiday!
Stay connected!
Visit CELA's social media, including X (formerly known as Twitter), Facebook, YouTube and our blog, for more news about what's happening in the world of accessible literature.