Not just over 60 - 100 years old reader!

I have got a new job! I had to become a member of the RVS to do it, and it is proving quite complicated, so I am here asking for advice and suggestions...

Elsie is 100, and has recently been moved to a local care home in Norfolk from Surrey. She has been blind since 2012 and is pretty deaf, so is limited to audiobooks on CD. (She can manage a simple CD player, and her niece has found some headphones that work for her.)

My job is to identify suitable CDs across Norfolk libraries and take them to her.

I have info from her niece, the person who found her books in Surrey, and Elsie herself, about what she has read and enjoyed and what she would like to listen to.

You would think it would be fairly straightforward to get lists of audiobooks from the library, then check authors, genres and blurbs for what she may like. You would be wrong.

First off, the spydus system that Norfolk Libraries uses can only list spoken word audio in title order. They have over 9000 titles - wonderful, you say! - but I can't search within the list, there are no tags or genres other than fiction/non-fiction/adult/children/youth/history/war/police/country/period/detective and mystery. No info on the recording (she can't cope easily with male voices or strong accents). She says she would like some travel books, books about animals, and she has a strong interest in Cornwall. I could work most of that out if I could marry the library list with LT; I can - if I manually walk through the list, looking up possible hits on LT to check. So far it has taken me all day just to step through the first 400 titles, let alone look them up.

So I have come here to vent - thank you for reading this far! If you have any suggestions, I will most gratefully accept them!

Can you access a library catalog that has search categories that are easier to use to come up with a want list; and then see if the Norfolk system has those by title?

What is RVS?

I’d also start a spreadsheet or an LT account just for Elsie.

Sounds like fun! Good for you both!

>2 2wonderY: RVS: Royal Voluntary Service.

>2 2wonderY:

As spiral says, Royal Voluntary Service - they do lots of stuff, including a lot of help with the vaccination effort at present. It means I have been police checked and certified safe to do stuff (!)

Yes, indeed I have a s/s - first thing I did! And set up an account for Elsie, to try and list what I know she has read and enjoyed and get auto-suggestions, as well as keep track of what is available. Its just such a huge job! I have to be careful not to obtain DVDs, electronic resources, adult playaways (not sure what they are, sounds a bit dodgy) by mistake.

I'm going to start with Hotel du Lac, which may be a tad highbrow, but is available locally as a CD. And probably order a couple of Gerald Durrells, which she may already know but is bound to enjoy. Plus Monica Dickens' One Pair of Hands, as she has said she would like that. Of course, authors she is sure to like tend to have been pruned from the library years ago (thinking Victoria Holt, Joan Aiken, Mary Stewart, etc)...

Playaway is just a cheap listening device for audio. It’s almost a throwaway player, and is usually pre-loaded with the material. I guess it was meant to be available for patrons who didn’t own the listening equipment, such as a CD player. Avoid them, as you were going to.

If she likes Cornwall and historical fiction, then the 12 book Poldark series might be for her; although, it is narrated by a male.

Other books set in Cornwall (have read, but not listened to on audio): Nightingale, The Baker's Secret, Sea Gate, The Dead Secret, Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, Frenchman's Creek, The Shellseekers, and A Gull on the Roof.

CD's are almost a thing of the past--makes it quite a bit more difficult than just a plain audiobook.

>7 Tess_W:
I am told she has read (listened to) all of the Poldark series, and quite a lot of du Maurier. I shall ask her about Derek Tangye when I see her next week - I recently re-read a couple of those myself and enjoyed them.

Fortunately our county system still has ~9000 spoken word CDs, so I hope I will be able to keep her going for as long as..

Might you punt this problem right back at the Norfolk system's reference staff? See if they can give you a spreadsheet or .csv of their 9000 audio books with some metadata like, perhaps, subject headings.

>9 librorumamans:
I've asked them if they can find more info, but I think they are currently severely overstretched. As far as I can tell, their catalog doesn't have much definition beyond romance, adventure, crime.

I took Hotel du Lac and a Betty Neels romance, so will phone soon and see how she got on with them. Her answer will tell me which end of the spectrum to go for.

>10 sarahemmm:
From what I've read about funding reductions to public libraries in the UK, I'm not surprised, really, that you have found the staff overstretched. Best of luck at finding your own solution.