Miriam Stone, Forest Hills, N.Y. has a passion for sports that spans almost every team in the Big Apple, including the Islanders, Liberty Jets, Mets, Mets, and Nets.
The 60-yearold is still connected to her teams through the audiobooksand braille materials from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.
Stone was born blind. As a child, she began to read braille books from NLS collections. Shortly thereafter, Stone discovered her love for sports and became a committed, never misses-a-game type of fan.
“I get ‘Sports Illustrated,’ I get ‘ESPN: The Magazine’ and I get all of the sports schedules from NLS every year. I get everything,”Stone said. “Everything — going on almost 40 years. I started in the ’70s, and I’m still doing it.”
Stone is able to get schedules for all her favorite teams using braille. She also enjoys reading science fiction and poetry through the NLS Talking-Book program. Stone accepted the digital audiobooks, and players, as they replaced the tapes that had been the core of the program for over 40 years.
“It changed very drastically when they got digital. Digital is very good because you can read whole books without turning over a tape,” Stone explains. “And the digital player is small — you can take it with you. I love gadgets!”
The NLS collection contains a variety of books relating to sports, including dozens from “The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron”Howard Bryant “Namath: A Biography”Mark Kriegel “Shooting Stars”Buzz Bissinger and LeBron Jam “Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN”By Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
NLS offers free digital books, readers and braille materials through a network collaborating libraries in every state. All eligible readers have instant access to thousands upon thousands of titles online via the Braille and Audio Reading Downloads (BARD). Anyone who is a U.S. citizen or resident abroad and is blind or has low vision, or can’t hold or turn pages due to illness or disability is eligible.
Learn more about NLS here www.loc.gov/nlsOr call 1-888-NLS-READ
