APH: About Louis

About Louis

The American Printing House for the Blind (APH) currently houses a database called the Louis Database of Accessible Materials for People who are Blind or Visually Impaired. Louis contains information about tens of thousands of titles of accessible materials, including braille, large print, sound recordings, and computer files from over 170 agencies throughout the United States.

You can access Louis two ways.

Through the Internet. Go to the APH website at www.aph.org/ and follow the links for Louis. There is a nifty help page available from the Help button on the first search page.
Call, e-mail, or fax the information to be searched.
Phone: 800-223-1839
E-mail: resource@aph.org
Fax: 502-899-2363

APH Resource Services will be happy to assist you in your search! To help facilitate your request, please have the ISBN, title, author, publisher and copyright year of the titles you are seeking. If you are looking for a test, please have the level and form. Please use fax or e-mail if you are looking for over five titles.

If you do not find a large print title on Louis, APH can enlarge it for you. The charge is $50.00 for items under 100 pages. The cost is $.50 per print page for items over 100 pages. To estimate your cost, count all pages, including title pages, glossaries, indices, etc., because APH will enlarge the entire work. The turnaround time is 8-12 weeks.

Listing titles on Louis:

There are very few requirements for agencies or individuals who want to add their titles to the Louis Database:

The first step is to send a letter stating that you wish to file your titles in Louis. The letter should include: name or agency name, address, phone number, fax number, e-mail address and contact person. It is important to remember that you must be willing to exchange, sell, or lend the materials nationwide.
Upon receipt of your contact information, we will send you Louis forms for filing Intentions and Completions. Use Intention forms when you begin transcribing or recording a book.
For each title, send photocopies of the front and back of the title page, along with a completed Intention form. This step is extremely important to accurately list your title in Louis.
When the item is completed, send in a Completion form. If the item is already completed, and no Intention form or photocopies were previously submitted, send the title page photocopies along with the Completion form.

The Louis forms are available at APH. Contact the Resource Services Department at: (502) 899-2338 or download the form (Word file) from the Website.

Some additional information about submitting titles:

Please submit an Intention form every time you begin transcribing or recording a book.

Please do not submit Intention forms for large print items.

If your titles are already listed with the Library of Congress National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), please do not submit titles to be listed on Louis.

If your agency lists over 500 titles on the database, APH requests that you contribute $500.00 per year toward the support of Louis. An invoice will be mailed to you each January. This amount allows us to meet our goal of keeping access to Louis free to all users.

APH File Repository

Louis also allows Ex Officio Trustees and "authorized entities" (as defined by the 1996 Chafee Amendment to the Copyright Law) to download APH software or braille files created by APH, braille files from volunteer state or government agencies, and files from publishers that are ready for braille translation. The cost for each download is $25.

To find these files in Louis, do your search as normal but limit your search by selecting "File Repository" in the "medium" box. The files available for download will have a note beneath the title saying so. Please contact your Ex Officio Trustee for download requests. All other questions can be answered by contacting APH Resource Services, resource@aph.org
or by phone at 1-800-223-1839.