PCC, DTBM Firmware Updates, and Announcements

In Operations Alert 18-83, NLS announced updated firmware for the Digital Talking Book Machine that will allow it users to listen to titles on a multi-title cartridge sequentially, without using the Bookshelf.

We know this is a great feature that will be of use to your users, especially for those of you using PCC (or planning to use Scribe or Gutenberg when they become available), and we want to make it easy to get this update out to your users. So, our developers are working on a tweak to PCC that will allow you to designate a firmware file to be loaded on each cartridge, in addition to the currently supported announcement file (or "Leaflet" as the NLS op-alert calls them).

We have also heard from users who are interested in more control over the announcement file--especially for a new feature, but also for new service, we can understand why you might want to send the announcement out to a user on more than just their first cartridge... but probably not on every cartridge forever. As we adjust things to allow for the firmware to be loaded as well, now is a great time to work on this, if it's really going to be of use.

So what are your thoughts? How important is it to you to be able to manage the lifespan of an announcement? Let us know--and if you want to assist us with testing this feature or to be notified when it's available to everyone, let us know that, too!

Making use of that new functionality in the DBM firmware is very important to me, because it's a big deal for the RAs. Having that feature would curb at least some patron frustration with learning to use a PCC, for those people who have a hard time with bookshelf.

If you haven't already, please coordinate this effort with NLS as there have already been formal requests sent in (mine was one) for access to a file for this new version that can be loaded to PCCs, or to have access to some other process that would get the same end result. I haven't gotten a reply on that, so I'm not sure if any progress has been made. Meanwhile, we're running some experiments with just dropping the update file onto a PCC like we do with our bookshelf instructions clip to see if that triggers the update to run on the player used with that cartridge

We are hoping to use the standard file, without needing a special version for PCCs. Please let us know how your experiments turn out!