The Library has announced a forum to review service patterns and project appropriate approaches to meeting the future reading and information needs of blind and physically handicapped persons.
The meeting, to be held under the auspices of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) in Washington on Sept. 3-5, will bring together leaders of the blind community, major library organizations, cooperating service organizations and federal agencies.
During the three-day gathering, participants will evaluate library service for blind and physically handicapped persons during the past 65 years, while looking toward the reading needs of the future. Attendees will focus on strategies for meeting needs traditionally provided by a variety of libraries -- public, special, government, college and university, and research. Participants will examine service in each of these areas and identify ways to fill the future information requirements of blind persons.
Papers will be solicited from representatives of organizations that were instrumental in founding the Library of Congress talking-book and braille program: the American Foundation for the Blind, the American Library Association, the American Printing House for the Blind and the Braille Institute of America. Also invited to take part in the deliberations will be consumer organizations and other service agencies, such as the National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind, as well as Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, and representatives from libraries working together with the Library of Congress in their service to blind individuals.
Since 1931, NLS, part of the Library of Congress, has coordinated a cooperative national program providing braille and recorded books and magazines to a readership of more than 770,000 people. NLS selects and produces full-length books and magazines in braille and on recorded disk and cassette. These reading materials are distributed through a cooperating network of 142 regional and subregional (public) libraries where they are circulated to blind and physically handicapped readers. Each year more than 22 million copies of special-format books and magazines are provided to readers.
