From Tom, the Tech Guy: BARD IS HERE!

BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download page, here! Now officially out of its pilot phase as of yesterday, April 30, 2009, the National Library Service of the Library of Congress has made all of its thousands of digitally recorded talking books available for download through BARD, free of charge to all blind and visually-impaired U.S. citizens with access to a computer, an Internet connection and a digital talking book player such as Humanware's Victor Reader Stream or Plextor's Plextalk Pocket DAISY book player/recorder.
After filling out a simple online application at the Bard website, readers will receive e-mails containing a user name and password as well as a user key which must be installed on their digital book player in order to enable playing of recorded content. Having completed this process, readers may log into BARD and access NLS's catalog of talking books and magazines.
Sporting a simple, no-frills user interface, BARD lets readers search the catalog by keywords such as an author's name or book title, or, if browsing is more to their liking, readers can peruse lists of recently-added books or the complete catalog organized by author, title or subject. Using these methods, it's easy, then, to locate available titles by such authors as Patricia Cornwell, Nelson De Mille or John Grisham, for example, to browse the humor section and locate titles by Tim Allen or Dave Barry, or peruse the music section and find Room Full of Mirrors, Charles Cross's biography of Jimi Hendrix, a must-read for Jimi fans.
In the magazine section, readers can obtain current issues of their favorite magazines such as Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction, Bon Appetit, Contemporary Soundtrack, National Geographic or Sports Illustrated, to name just a few. Back issues of these magazines are available there as well.
Tired of waiting days or even weeks for a talking book or magazine to arrive in your mailbox, only to find that a tape's missing or all snarled up? Go see the Bard and download your book or magazine in mere minutes! Transfer it from your computer to your digital book player and you're good to go! How cool is that?
BARD