Media
Center
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.