DCMP: More Than a Library

Did you know about DCMP's vast collection of information about accessibility? This month's newsletter article highlights these lesser-known, but extremely useful information services: the Clearinghouse and Gateway. Head to the article to read more!

Thankful for Health

This month's first of two new flyers highlights The Living Body series, now available with description and captions. This 26-part series is one of the many titles made available as part of the DCMP/CaptionMax Emerging Technologies partnership. To learn more about this series, view the "Thankful for Health" flyer.

Fill Up on Captioned Media

This month's second new flyer is all about Thanksgiving...and food. View the Thanksgiving flyer to learn a bit of history about the holiday, and view a list of captioned titles that tie into Thanksgiving traditions.

Information: The Key to Being Informed

If you're like us, you're a fan and advocate of accessible media. Whether you're at home, at school, or just out and about, you're telling others about captions and description.

You may be a student planning to write a paper about the history of closed captioning, or maybe you are a friend of an individual who is visually impaired and would like to know more about description. Likewise, you may want to purchase your own copy of one of our titles for your collection but don't know where to find it.

When confronted with the inevitable "Ws" (Why would I want captions turned on? What is description? Where do I find accessible media? When did captioning begin?), we at DCMP are eager to help!

The DCMP: More Than a Library

Let's face it: most people who read this newsletter are familiar with DCMP's free-loan accessible educational media service. Who can blame them? We are quite proud of our reputation as the nation's largest free-loan library of accessible educational media and hope to continue that tradition for years to come. We’re also proud to host an invaluable resource of free information for you, the DCMP member.

Let's begin with the Clearinghouse, which previously existed as the Captioning Accessibility Information (CAI) section on our old Web site. With the launch of the new dcmp.org, CAI grew to include various articles about description and was renamed "Clearinghouse" to reflect our goal of being the premiere source of educational captioning and description information.

Clearinghouse articles, which have been written by DCMP staff or contributed by teachers, researchers, and parents, are neatly organized by subject area. You may download and print, or share with others any or all of the several hundred unique articles in the Clearinghouse for no charge.

The Gateway Approach

What if you can't find the specific information you're looking for in our Clearinghouse articles? What if you would like to expand upon an idea or concept you discovered while reading an article? Most people would simply head to a popular search engine, such as Google, and...well, you know how that works from there. But what if you could find this information without having to leave the friendly confines of dcmp.org?

That brings us to our Google-powered Gateway service, a new addition to DCMP's information services. You can launch the Gateway search at any time by entering a search term in the field labeled "Search" on the left-hand navigation menu and clicking "GO!" You can also click the Clearinghouse tab again and select the "Search the Gateway" link.

Once your results are returned, you'll immediately notice the familiar Google-oriented layout but with a new twist. The default Gateway search will yield three sets of results: those from dcmp.org, those from our media collection, and those from Web sites of other organizations committed to equal access.

Explore the Gateway

So why use the Gateway when you can use the "real" Google? Since Gateway searches are limited to our partner organizations and their information—and filtered to prevent repetition—our Gateway search is very useful for finding information about accessibility. In addition, Gateway search results are more likely to be up-to-date than those returned from a general Google search. This is because our Google appliance only searches for information on the sites we tell it to, and not the billions of other sites on the Internet.

Let's not forget searching the DCMP catalog of free-loan media! Use the "Search" link under the Media Library tab (shortcut: Alt+M) to easily locate titles in our collection through a simple search of the Gateway rather than browsing the online catalog.

Finally, what about those of you who are looking to purchase copies of the captioned titles in our collection? It's easy! By changing the search criteria, you can search our database (powered by R.R. Bowker) of captioned media available for purchase which will provide you with contact information for producers and/or distributors from whom you may purchase media.

	How do you specify your search criteria to have the Gateway tailor your results exactly the way you want them? It's quite simple. You'll notice there's a pull-down menu to the right of the search box. Click the pull-down menu for a list of possible search filters, as demonstrated in this image: Using this feature, you'll have quick access to any material on the DCMP Web site as well as from our partners' collections of resources.

Hopefully, this month's message has shed some light on some new sources of information about accessible media. Be sure to stop back often to check out our new articles as we build a resource of description-related materials. We're always looking for insightful contributions to the Clearinghouse from our members and others, and we welcome you to contact us with ideas!