Using the Library and Bookshare

Retrieving books electronically provides quick and easy access to books in braille right from therefreshable display. There is no need to emboss and consume tons of paper when braille is right at your fingertips. This also means that students can carry multiple books with them, wherever they go, without the burden of carrying the hardcopy volumes.

Learning to Study Using the Digital Book

A similar training process to the one used to teach young children to properly navigate a hardcopy bookshould be employed to teach a student who has been given their first digital book. Think for a moment about the basic skills a student must acquire to quicklyand efficiently navigate through a textbook:

  • using the table of contents
  • finding a particular page number
  • locating headings
  • looking for highlighted terms
  • using chapter summaries
  • using the index
  • using the glossary
  • placing bookmarks and making notes

The ease of navigation in an electronic book varies, depending on the type of book and how thoroughly the book was marked up. “Marking up” refers to how many headings, subheadings, and/or heading levels were specified during the production of the digital book. For example, some DAISY books simply mark the beginning of each chapter, but other DAISY booksare marked at chapter headings and at several subheadings throughout each chapter. On the other hand, a BRF file book means it is simply a braille ready file,which means the book is not marked up at all. The only way to navigate a book like this is to perform a “find” and type in the text you are looking for such as a chapter or page number.

Note: BRF files are opened in the word processor and do not use the Library application. Therefore, the Library application on the Braille Plus 18is designed for DAISY books since these offer much better navigation. Keep this in mind as you teach the student the best way to navigate a digital book.

Getting Booksonto the Braille Plus 18

There are two primary ways of getting books onto the Braille Plus 18. The first is to use an external drive, such as a USB thumb drive or SD card, as was discussed in the Using the Word Processor section of this class guide. The second method is to use the built-in BookShare search tool. We will discuss each method separately.

Transferring Books Using an External Drive

The advantage to this method is that the Braille Plus 18 does not have to be connected to the internet to download a book. The process isto download the book onto the external drive from a computer and then copy it onto the Braille Plus 18.The book can be downloaded onto the computer from BookShare or another DAISY source. Refer to your specific DAISY book source for downloading instructions.

Once the book is downloaded onto a USB flash drive or SD card, these are the steps for copyinga book to the Braille Plus 18:

  1. Go to file manager and locate the external drive and the book you wish to copy.
  2. While on the file name, hold down the select key to open the context menu. If the select key is simply pressed and not held down, the book will open. In order to copy the book, this key must be held to enter the context menu. The first option that appears is cut. You do not want to cut because this will remove the file from the external drive. Instead, arrow down to copy.
  3. Left arrow to return to the list of drives and choose the internal SD. Now, because we are copying a DAISY book, it is imperative to arrow through the folders on the internal SD memory to find the Library folder.
  4. Select the Library folder and a subfolder called books will open. Choose select on books.Hold down select again until cut appears, then arrow down to where it says paste.
  5. Select paste and the bookbegins to copy from the external drive onto the internal SD card (main memory) of the Braille Plus 18 (the word “copying” will appear on the braille display).Your book is copied into a specific folder, not the root directory, so that the Reader application will open the book from within the Library.

Using theBookShare Search Tool

The Braille Plus 18 must be connected to wireless internet for this section. Also, the student must have a BookShare account and the login information to access that account.

Downloading preferences for the type of book (DAISY or BRF format) are set directly from your BookShare account. You can change these preferences by logging directly into your BookShare account from the web, but not while in the BookShare search tool.The Braille Plus 18BookShare search tool will override any preference, as this application downloads only in DAISY (for the best navigation experience). If you already have a DAISY book copied onto the Braille Plus 18 using the previous method, and do not wish to use the built-in BookSharesearch tool at this time, you may skip ahead to the section called Reading the Digital Book.

BookShare is one of the primary sources for downloading both leisure reading and textbook materials. The goal of this BookShare section is for the student to become comfortable searching and downloading books directly onto the Braille Plus 18 using BookShare.

The BookShare search tool can be accessed one of two ways:

Option 1: From the home screen, scroll down and select Library. Use the down arrow to scroll to "bookshare search" and select it.

Option 2: Access the "all applications" menu and scroll down to "bookshare search." Choose select.

Student Task

Once the BookShare search has been opened, there are three ways to search: by title, by author, or by category. The select search by category is helpful for anyone who may have never searched BookShare before, or when you are just looking for an interesting book with no particular author or title in mind. To search by title follow these steps:

  1. Choose select on "search by title."
  2. An edit box will appear. Type in the words "cool stuff.” You can use either uncontracted or contracted braille. When you have typed your search, choose select.
  3. Down arrow until the book"Cool Stuff 2.0: by Chris Woodford appears. At the time of this writing, five results appear for the search "cool stuff” and this particular book is the seconditem in the list.With this book highlighted, hold down the select key. It is important to hold down this key for a couple of seconds. If you only press itor accidently press it twice, the book will automatically download, as download is the first of the two choices. Arrow down to “get book information.” When you select "get book info," a brief synopsis of the book is given.
  4. Once the synopsis has been read, press the back button to return to the book list.The title of the book just viewed is still displayed. To download this book,press the select button and choose select on “download.”
  5. BookShare then prompts for the login information required to access this account. You can choose to log in or cancel. Choose select on login. Computer braille is required to enter the email and password of the BookShare account.
  6. Upon successful login, the book selected is automatically downloaded. If the login information is already saved, then you may download by just choosing select on this option.
  7. The book is now in the Library application and can be accessed by going to "library" right from the home screen.

For further information, go to the Librarysection of the User Guide manual at:

When you open the Library application from the home screen, the first option is “1. Recent titles 1 of 4.” This is where the most recent downloaded book will be located, if it was downloaded using the BookShare search tool. It downloads in DAISY and automatically places it into the library.

If you copied a DAISY book from an external drive and pasted it into the “books” subfolderunder the library folder, the book should appear here as well. The other choices are to view books by author or to view all titles. If the book was copied from an external drive and it is not showing up in the library under any of these options, go to tools from the home screen, select file manager, and search through the list to locate the book. It is possible that the book is in a BRF format, or it didn’t copy to the correct subfolder. If the book has a .brf file extension, it is a braille ready file and will only open in the word processor; the library application cannot be used. Make sure that the book is, in fact, in the DAISY format before attempting to copy and paste.

Reading the Digital Book

When you press select on a book it opens and speech begins reading the book, starting with the title and author. Speech reading can be paused at any point by pressing the S2 key. The book can be read from the braille display whether speech is on or off. The navigation commands continue to work without speech.The student can use the braille display for silent reading and skimming, just as though it was a hardcopy book.Remember that speech can be turned off with space+S and toggled back on at anytime.

Most books are navigable by chapter, but a well produced DAISY book, such as a textbook, will be sub-divided into additional levels enabling navigation by subheadings,or even page by page,when navigation is set to the highest level. The higher the level number, the more subheadings the book will have. The default setting for Braille Plus 18 is to the highest navigation level for a given book.For example, the first navigable item in the book "Cool Stuff 2.0," which we downloaded during the previous section, is the table of contents; then there are section headings, which are further divided into subheadings. This particular book opens on navigation level 2, which means that it navigates to and reads all the subheadings in each section. However, if you wanted to navigate by chapter titles only, pressing a space+2356 changes the navigation level tosections only.

To navigate forward through the book,press space+345 and space+126 to navigate backward.

Press space+56 to navigate forward by page number and space+23 to navigate backward by page.

Library and BookShareQuiz

1. Which book format offers the most navigation options?

  1. brf
  2. DAISY **
  3. neither of these

2. Which of the following is NOT an advantage of electronic books?

  1. Do not need to carry a lot of Braille volumes around.
  2. Can store several books on one handheld device.
  3. Must learn how to transfer books to the handheld device. **

3. If you are copying a DAISY book from an external USB drive or SD card onto the Braille Plus 18, where must the book be copied?

  1. Anywhere in the file manager.
  2. In the download folder.
  3. In the books subfolder, under the library folder. **

4. What are the commands for moving by page in a DAISY book?

  1. space+23 and space+56 **
  2. up and down arrows
  3. space+345 and space+126

5. When you are in the BookShare Search tool looking at a list of results, how do you get more information on a book?

A. Hold down the select key and down arrow to get book information. **

B. Choose select while on the book.

C. Keep reading past the title; the book information is already displayed.