The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) has produced a search guide that will help blind and physically handicapped readers locate books in its online union catalog.
The catalog, which lists some 225,000 books in braille and audio formats, has been available online for several years, but is used mostly by librarians and reader advisers who are familiar with LOCIS (Library of Congress Information System).
The new search guide will enable NLS patrons who have access to the Internet to perform their own searches to identify and locate books they may wish to borrow. In addition to finding specific titles of interest using the BPHP files, readers will also be able to view listings of books that are in process, using the BPHI files. BPHP contains catalog records from several institutions in the United States and other countries that serve blind and physically handicapped readers. BPHI contains records for books that NLS has selected for the collection but that have not yet been completed in recorded or braille format and other records for which the cataloging has not been completed.
Written by Bob Axtell, head of the NLS Bibliographic Control Section, Union Catalog Online: SCORPIO Files BPHP and BPHI: A Search Guide is an adaptation of the SCORPIO Reference Guide and the LOCIS Reference Manual. Internet users can access the guide through the Library of Congress gopher, MARVEL (address: marvel.loc. gov). It is also available in print, braille and recorded form from NLS.