A SIGHTLESS LIBRARIAN

Hokitika Guardian, 12 March 1930, Page 7

A SIGHTLESS LIBRARIAN

DEVELOPS INDEX AND

CATALOGUE

AUCKLAND, March 6.

A librarian who is totally blind, but who lias developed a library index and catalogue in Brailie at the Jubilee Institute tor the Blind, is the admiration °f visitors to Auckland attending the annual eonlerence of the New Zealand Libraries Association. •Mi' t lutba N. Alackenzie, director of the institute, said in an address at the eonlerence this morning that Aliss G. Vihiie, the blind librarian, kept addresses and entries of incoming and outgoing books on Braille indexes, maintained an interested correspondon e with her readers, advised and selected, and did her work within her small community much, as the ideal :li,)l ; ill ' ii >" should. Mr Mackenzie said e 111 icavou.rs were now being made in England to arrive at a mutually acceptable Braille form. There was every prospect that a system embodying about a 5 per cent, increase in the size of British volumes would be adopted, the Americans sacrificing practically all their past systems. _ The inn in source of supply of publications, books, magazines, and music, was the National institute for the Blind, London, wlii h had the best equipment yet devised, he said. A cloth board volume costs from 8s to 10s to produce, but through generous Government and private contributors was sold to B.itish buyers at one-third the cost. The American Braille Press in Paris, supported by American philanthropy, distributed excellent works free to libraries throughout the world. 1 he Braille Bible occupied 39 volumes; Gibbon’s "Define and Fall of tbe Boman Empire” ran to 37 volumes, and the average novel to from three to live volumes. Other methods of rending for the blind were si : oresent the subject of research work in Europe and America, In New Zealand the generous grants totalling £45 per annum from City Councils of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin, went for towards securing all fresh publications to the National Institute, said Mr Mackenzie. The trustees of the institute and the blind themselves wished to express their keen appreciation of their lieln.