BARD Mobile 4+

I am 71 years old and have been a library patron since I was about age 7. I have used this app for many years. I have had to change my password unnecessarily a number of times. I am currently trying to reset my password from my iPhone. I don’t really want to do this, but the website will not let me login with different devices. I am repeatedly told that my ticket is incomplete even though I enter all the information and follow all the instructions. I have repeatedly requested instructions for resetting my password be sent and I have followed the instructions I’ve gotten only to hit a brick wall. For existing patrons, this is absolutely ridiculous. I know the website has to be secure and protected from people who are in eligible to use it, but I shouldn’t be experiencing this much difficulty when I have followed all the steps necessary. Otherwise, the app is OK although some other things need to be fixed as well. I should also be able to login without going to a website browser. I went to Safari, logged in there, and downloaded a book that I wanted but was unable to listen to it without re-downloading the app. When I re-downloaded the app, I thought maybe the problem would be fixed and I still can’t listen to the book that I downloaded from the web browser. totally ridiculous.

Keep in mind, a signature from a doctor or healthcare professional is required before you get approval from the NLS. Here in my state the whole process only took about one week. When initially installing the BARD app it would be beneficial to have someone fully cited by your side to help you sign in. Having said that, the app and service exceeded all expectations! I know some users have experienced issues, but that wasn't my experience. Maybe it was a software bug that has since been resolved? nevertheless, as a voiceover user I found the app and controls very easy to navigate. The layout is very straight forward and intuitive. Searching, adding books to your wishlist, downloading, and deleting are simple to perform. This goes for using the audio player as well. In voiceover mode, one flick of the finger gives you all kinds of secondary options like more titles by that particular author or subject. I was very impressed with the amount of titles in the library, with new ones being added regularly. They may not have brand new releases, but they are as recent as six months to a year. I did a comparison to Apple books and found that BARD had about 2/3 of the titles of the former, at least the ones I was looking for. Lastly, the narrators are all top-notch with great voices and diction.

I've been a listener of NLS books since way back when, and by that I mean I used to wait around for my box of cassette tapes to come in the mail so I could load my next books into a massive machine with a bunch of weird slider controls and switches. Now I can just download books into the app, and I must say I'm a huge fan. The audiobook library is truly massive, and the app is usually pretty reliable. The only thing holding me back from a 4 or 5 star review? Well, as a user of a lot of apple products, I often play my Bard books on my Homepod speaker through Airplay, and this is a very frustrating experience because the Bard app has yet to be updated to use the Airplay 2 standard. Without being too technicle, this means that using Airplay is a very sluggish and glitchy experience. I was hoping the recent update to the app would finally fix this, but unfortunately it did not. Bottom line, I love the massive library, and the app works well enough, but it doesn't work well with my set-up which is frustrating.