The ISVI Media Center serves Pre-K through 12th grade students with visual impairments and the staff of the school.  In addition, members of the Jacksonville community, surrounding areas and throughout Illinois.

A major feature of the ISVI Media Center is the section of books on cassette tapes. These are on loan from the Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center, which is a division of the Alliance Library System. There are 4200 tapes available. New cassettes are added weekly from the Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center. In addition, we have 456 video tapes for residential and classroom use. Of these tapes, 50 are DVS. Descriptive videos (DVS) are specifically recorded with narration for those with visual impairments.

In meeting the needs of staff and students to access information, the ISVI Media Center has computerized the card-cataloging system to allow any user to search for topics and come up with a list of all materials found in the Media Center on any given topic.  The Media Center offers six computers running Windows '98.  All of these computers have speech and screen enlargement software. Students use electronic sources of information which can be edited, transferred to large print, Braille or used with speech access software. Scanners, embossers, and high speed printers are available for our visually impaired patrons to acquire and present information. Technology is available for our users that will put large print and Braille on the same page.

In finding up-to-date information, students and staff have access to the Internet and Electric Library. Hundreds of popular full text magazines, dozens of current newspapers, thousands of photographs and maps are accessed through Electric Library. The information acquired through these sources can be printed, Brailled, or used with speech access software.

The ISVI Media Center is a member of the Resource Sharing Alliance sponsored by the Alliance Library System. There are 182 participating libraries that have their records on a database. Altogether, there are over 3,000,00 items on the database. Through interlibrary loan, the member libraries are able to expand and share their resources. School, public, special, college, and university libraries are a part of the Resource Sharing Alliance.

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